


My Immortal Lily and the Art of Bringing Me to Life

by The_Carnivorous_Muffin



Series: Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus [42]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, My Immortal
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Angst, Attempted Murder, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Depression, Dubious Consent, Existentialism, F/M, Female Harry Potter, Horror, Humor, M/M, Master of Death Harry Potter, Murder, One-Sided Attraction, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-07-01 07:40:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 20
Words: 62,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15769602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Carnivorous_Muffin/pseuds/The_Carnivorous_Muffin
Summary: On what seems like an ordinary day in Hogwarts Lily and company find themselves in a surreal reality that seems to hinge entirely on a strange transfer student by the name of Ebony Way. Now, with reality tearing at the seams, Lily must find a way to save the universe before everything she knows and loves sinks into a goffick abyss.





	1. Hogwarts' Latest and Most Goffick Student

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory note that this is NOT CANON. Also, based on "My Immortal" (you know the one) so passing familiarity with that is helpful but not required.

** AN: Special fangs, if you don't get it then fook you prep, to The Carnivorous Muffin for pledgerisssng da storie and stilin ma charactrzz. Tell the preps to go fuk themselves and to all u goffick faans oot thar, you rock. Oh, and flammers, stoop flammin the story, okay! The Carnivorous Muffin stils thangs all de time, and is waay cooler dan u preppy loosers. **

** Tanks for helpin me with da spelling, u are da luv of ma depersing life, and tell Raven I said hi.  **

** 666 **

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** 666 **

_ In which Lily learns the true nature of the world and the ultimate battle between the preps and the goths that would determine the fate of the universe, Lily is blamed for recent events and in turn chooses to blame Rabbit for recent events, and everyone becomes a Satanist.  _

* * *

 

Lily wanted to say she was feeling an acute sense of déjâ vu that morning, on par with her presenting Lepur Rabbitson's half-brother, Lenin Rabbitson, to her Defaultian comrades but at the same time it wasn't. If only because this time Lily herself wasn't doing the introducing, in fact she wasn't doing much of anything, just eating breakfast with the team, listening as Wizard Lenin complained about the state of the education to anyone who would give him half an ear (which appeared to only be Luna), and had only been thoroughly interrupted when… well… this happened.

Actually, they had all been interrupted, as they turned to stare at the new transfer student, just announced by Dumbledore, and presented to the Default table with unholy glee or at the very least an unholy amount of relief from the other heads of houses, that she wouldn't be their problem.

Which, well, Lily herself wasn't one to judge but none the less…

That was an awful lot of leather for the Hogwarts uniform, especially on a twelve-year-old. Actually, it was just a lot of eye catching clothing in general on a twelve-year-old. The leather miniskirt, the leather corset, the leather dog-collar, the leather shoes, not to mention the foundation, the blood red lipstick, and the startling amount of eyeliner.

"The hell, Ellie?" Blaise commented, turning to her with an accusing glance. To which everyone responded by also staring at Lily, like this was all her fault somehow.

Before Lily could proclaim that she had no idea what was going on, both to appease Blaise, as well as Wizard Lenin who was getting a very suspicious look on his face the girl spoke, "Hi,"

She seemed to be waiting for some response, except not, because although there was an awkward pause the girl didn't seem flustered by it. Instead she sat down right across from Wizard Lenin and next to Hermione, either oblivious or unbothered by the increased intensity of Hermione and Wizard Lenin's glaring.

Lily finally realized that someone was going to have to say something and apparently that was going to have to be her, "Hello… So, you're a transfer student."

The girl nodded, then exclaimed because for whatever reason it was an exclamation, "I'm actually a vampire and a witch, and I'm seventeen, I've spent the past eighteen years touring with god Chralotte as their lead singer, but then I realized that I needed to go to Hogwaarts and had to come back, but I decided to look younger so that I could go to classes with the goffs instead of those looser prepz."

For a moment, no one said anything, then with a sigh, Daphne said, "This is worse than the Albanian."

"Excuse me?" Wizard Lenin's eyebrows raised and for a second he seemed to baffled at the thought of anyone saying that to be angry.

"Oh, can it Rabbitson, you know you're damn creepy and don't even pretend that you're not!" Daphne, it was to be noticed, had reached her limit long before this particular breakfast with Wizard Lenin's grand charade.

"I am traumatized! I have had a very difficult childhood!" The sad thing was that Wizard Lenin actually seemed rather offended by all of this. Then he pointed to the unnamed girl sitting among them, "And she has had some sort of a stroke!"

"But seriously, Ellie, I will play however much quidditch you want if you stop dragging people into Default. It's starting to get embarrassing." Blaise commented, waving off both Wizard Lenin and Daphne before they could go at each other's throats.

"Yeah, that's great but… This one isn't mine." Lily said, hoping one of them realized that the girl, whatever her name was, was still sitting right there.

The girl certainly realized as she raised her middle finger and said in a rather slurred tone, "Foook you prepz!"

It was a sad statement about Default that not one of them felt the inclination to be polite towards her. In fact, it was a very sad statement that out of all of them, probably her, Rabbit, and Luna were in any position to even pretend to be interested.

As if on cue Luna took it as her time to shine.

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry. That was very rude of us, also I've never been called a prep before, is that some kind of a bird?" Luna said, twittering in fact much like a bird as she inspected the newest apparent addition to Default with a cocked head, "My name's Luna Lovegood, and sitting across from you is comrade Lenin Rabbitson, next to you is our resident realist and cynic Hermione Granger, Blaise the quidditch expert, Daphne the beautiful one, Lepur Rabbitson the nameless demon from the void beyond existence, and finally our glorious leader in the battle for existence, Eleanor Lily Potter. What's yours?"

The girl sniffed, but no longer seemed quite so offended, and replied, "My name is Enoby Darkness Dementia Raven Way, and as you can probably tell I'm a goff."

"You don't say?" Was Wizard Lenin's dry, raised eyebrows, response to this.

"I'm also a Satanist."

This however, had Hermione spewing her oatmeal across the table. After choking on her food for a few moments, Hermione offered her first comment of the day, "Ellie, I'll accept the Albanian communists and demons, I don't think I can handle a Satanist."

"I'm serious guys, this isn't mine!" Lily said, but as with the Chamber of Secrets it seemed as if no one was quite willing to believe her.

And, almost unwillingly, Lily noticed the pale blue color of the girl's eyes. A color that was almost reminiscent of Wizard Lenin's, a thought Lily didn't want to have inside of her head. Because they had never considered the possibility that Wizard Lenin's bastard daughter, who Wizard Lenin was so undyingly ashamed of that he never once mentioned her, would be the one to unleash the basilisk in the school instead of Wizard Lenin's other half.

"Right, so some vampire witch, just shows up in the middle of the year, while there's a murder investigation going on, and it's not your fault? Let me guess, she's also from Albania, isn't she?"

Lily was about to respond that, no, it wasn't her fault at all, but out of absolutely nowhere, well, apparently from the Slytherin table, Draco Malfoy had appeared. Or at least, Lily thought it was Draco Malfoy, it certainly looked like him. Well, if he'd turned his eyes red for whatever reason and started wearing loose baggy pants with chains, which also did not match the Hogwarts uniform.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi," Ebony replied flirtatiously, her red eye shadow doing wonders to accentuate the pale blue of her eyes.

"Guess what?"

"What?" Ebony asked.

"Good Charlotte is having a concert in Hogsmede," he told me.

"Oh, my, fucking, god!" Ebony screamed in delight, standing and shaking the table as she did so, "I love GC, they are my favorite band, besides MCR."

"What the hell is a GC?" Wizard Lenin asked Lily, his reference to all things in popular culture, but frankly Lily had no idea either. It didn't seem to matter though to New Draco and Ebony, in fact, from their expressions it looked like Christmas had come both murder free and early to Hogwarts.

"Well, do you want to go wif me?" Draco asked, much to the shocked horror of the Default table.

Enoby gasped.

END OF CHAPTER

(Lily turned to her Default peers, they turned to Lily, and Lily proclaimed, "I believe, comrades, that the universe could very well be destroying itself as we speak."

For once, no one disagreed.)

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** AN: Is it gut? Plez tell me, fangs. I won't continue without 10 good reviows! **


	2. Lenin Concedes Defeat in a Flying Car

** AN: Preps stoop flammin the story okay! Lily's name is Lee, not Mary-Sue and Ebony's is Enoby! And Draco's only acting different because he likes Enoby, okay! They knew each other before and are in love. And wizrad Lennon likes acting tuff buut he has heart too and he's just acting different because he's sooo in luv with Lee.  **

** Fangs to The Carnivorous Muffin, I love you like I love Hot Topic.  **

** 666 **

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** 666 **

_ In which, in a surprising turn of events, Lenin begins to question the stability of reality and the meaning of existence, Uncle Death makes a surprise if horrifying reappearance, and Lily is very confused and more than a little concerned. _

* * *

 

Lily and Wizard Lenin stared out the window onto the grounds of Hogwarts towards the lake, for the most part they were silent, both watching the extremely out of season weather pummel the grounds.

Hagrid was going to have his work cut out for him.

"Huh, it's snowing and raining again," Lily said, although this was quite the understatement, rather it was like a blizzard and a flood decided to go on at the same time.

"Yes, Lily, I dare say it is," Wizard Lenin responded.

"Not very good concert weather," Lily continued, before turning and asking, "It is a concert, right? Whatever this GC thing is?"

"Well, that's just too bad for Enoby Way and Draco Malfoy." Wizard Lenin said, without any sympathy for the pair, which was perhaps warrented, even if Lily was unwillingly sympathetic towards Draco's new wardrobe.

Anyone wearing that, well, they were sure to get the shit kicked out of them in Slytherin. Lily, if she was still in Slytherin, would gleefully use Draco's new fashion statement to her advantage. Luckily for Draco, Lily wasn't a Slytherin anymore, was a happy ex-Slytherin.

Still, "You don't think we should go?"

"I have no interest in musicians or… Satanists."

"I don't know Lenin, that was… weird. I mean, Draco's never been…" Whatever the hell Draco was, wearing leather and eye liner, and foundation and more eyeliner, "It really seems like the universe might actually be falling apart. Plus, they cancelled classes so that we could attend."

"I don't care."

No, he didn't, and Lily wouldn't either if… Well, everything. She just didn't know what to make of any of this.

It was at that moment that she appeared in the hallway, as if merely speaking her name was enough to draw her from the ether, and there she was in a new outfit. In a full length leather dress, with far too much cleavage for a twelve year old, knee high lace up boots with heels, white foundation, black eyeshadow, black lipstick, black eyeliner, that leather collar around her neck again, and of course those pale blue eyes.

"Oh, hello Ebony, Lenin and I were just discussing you," Lily said with a stretched, forced, grin, then her eyes drifted to her pale arms, and specifically, the very large barely healed gashes in them, the gashes that hadn't been there that morning.

"Oh, oh, well, um…" It was evidently clear that Ebony had attempted suicide, or else had a terrible accident with knives, "Uh… How are your wrists?"

Wizard Lenin looked over at Lily with raised eyebrows and a look of disbelief.

"I felt a little depressed so I slit ma wrists." The girl said in her strange, slurred, disjointed way.

"Oh, well, um, glad you're still here… Did you change your mind?"

"Yeah, I guess," Ebony said with a shrug, moving up to the sill of the window and staring out at the rain-snow that was still pouring over the grounds.

Lily looked at Wizard Lenin, Wizard Lenin looked at Lily, both glanced at Ebony.

"Enoby, was there something you needed?" Wizard Lenin asked, and the girl offered him a rather patronizing look before staring back out the window and blushing.

"Draco's taking me to da concert. He said he'd pick me up."

"Here?" Lily asked, after all, it wasn't really anywhere Lily would think to pick anyone up. They were nowhere near the ground floor or any exit, unless you wanted to take the window and plummet to your death, which… well, maybe Ebony did.

Before Lily can point out that the only thing particularly interesting here is a window a blur of black crosses her vision. And there, floating outside of the school, is a flying black limosine complete with the liscnce plate enscribed with '666'.

"…No, this is… This is too far," Wizard Lenin said, but regardless the window rolled down in the back to reveal none other than the new, and debatably improved, Draco Malfoy in a baggy t-shirt of some band Lily had never heard of, that absurd amount of eyeliner, and white foundation.

Ebony grinned, climbed into the window sill, and then into the open car door. The car waited.

"Oh, um, are you waiting for us?" Lily asked.

Wizard Lenin turned to her and glared in disbelief, "Why the devil would they be waiting for us?"

"Are you going to de concert? If not you must be some sort of looser prep, Potter." Draco said, talking in that strange jilted, slurred, way that Ebony did.

"Oh, well, I'd hate to be a prep," Lily said, still not entirely sure what a prep even was.

With that Lily climbed out the window and into the strangely stylish limousine, well, if you ignored the lace and red leather everywhere, with much swearing and glaring Wizard Lenin managed to crawl his way in after her.

And with that they were off, sitting awkwardly in silence, Ebony and Draco staring into the depths of each other's eyes.

"So, Draco, this is a new look," Lily commented, hoping this didn't sound too accusing.

"Oh, ja, I became Satanist over the summer."

It was fall verging on early winter, and as far as Lily could tell, Draco hadn't spent any time before this day being a Satanist. If he was a Satanist, because Lily had always imagined Satanists being, well, more culty.

"Really, a Satanist," Wizard Lenin said, in a tone that implied he believed anything but this.

Draco and Ebony gave Wizard Lenin a rather accusing glance and it was Draco who asked, in a rather threatening tone for a twelve-year-old boy, "Are you some sort of prep?"

Wizard Lenin offered the pair a thin smile, "No. You see, I'm afraid I'm not entirely sure what a prep is."

"Like fooking Brittany," Ebony explained, as if this should clear up all questions, which, it didn't, since Lily didn't know any Brittanys.

"Right,"

They then sat in silence for a while, Lily feeling a little awkward about it all and Wizard Lenin just staring at the pair with increasing scrutiny, and with raised eyebrows when Draco took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one with a muggle lighter. He then passed one to Ebony who lit one instead with wandless magic, the glow of the end like a red dwarf in her eyes, forever expanding and just on the verge of death.

The radio turned on, but to something she didn't recognize at all, but could best be described as beyond disturbed. Now, that wasn't to say Lily was prudish in her music choices, not that Led Zepplin or the Beatles were anything to be offended by but this… Well…

A man whispered as guitars thrummed, as if right next to her ear, and beneath his was a darker more worrisome voice that sounded barely human at all, _"And I don't want you and I don't need you. Don't bother to resist, or I'll beat you. It's not your fault you're always wrong. The weak ones are there to justify the strong."_

Draco and Ebony burned out their cigarettes, grinding them out into the leather of the seats, and without a word Draco brought out a bad of poorly rolled joints and passed one to Ebony filling the car with that pungent and unmistakable odor of weed.

This was then replaced by two glass tubes filled with translucent and almost white rocks of crack.

_ "The horrible people, the horrible people. It's as anatomic as the size of your steeple. Capitalism has made it this way. Old fashioned fascism will take it away…" _

Now, if you were going to go on a rant about the ills of capitalism Lily wasn't quite sure why you'd turn to fascism, but she supposed this song wasn't written with her in mind, or well, it didn't seem like a song that cared whether it impressed her or not.

"Lily, I can't believe I'm saying this but… I believe you may have a point this time."

Lily cast an eye to Wizard Lenin who was still staring at Ebony and Draco in disbelief, "About what?"

"This, Lily, is beyond surreal."

Lily looked back to the pair, and thought as she stared at them that yes, yes it was.

Soon afterwards, much to Lily and Wizard Lenin's delight after being trapped in a car with the pair and the smoke, the car stopped in front of a raging crowd which Ebony and Draco quickly lost themselves in, of course they were almost immediately visible again as Draco's white hair began to bob up and down along with the rest of the crowd.

Lily and Wizard Lenin stood on the outskirts staring in.

"So, this is GC," Wizard Lenin said, more out of an apparent need to say something than anything else, "I thought they'd be taller."

"…I still don't understand what's going on, but I think I'm concerned." Lily said, because this was true, she really didn't, and well, that was sort of alarming. Hogwarts, while inconsistent, usually wasn't this inconsistent.

"As am I, Lily, as am I."

"Do you want to get closer?" Lily asked.

Wizard Lenin considered it for a moment, then said, "No, I think I've seen enough."

Lily nodded, feeling much the same way, but then she stopped, stared for a moment, and kept peering for the face she thought she saw (but can't have truly seen) inside of the crowd.

"What is it?" Wizard Lenin asked, having already turned around to make his way back to the castle.

"I think… I thought, for a moment, that I saw Death." Well, not Death, but… it was his face, a younger version, but his eyes had been red, and it looked like there had been some sort of a pentagram inscribed on his forehead.

"…Do you have any idea how ominous that just sounded?" Wizard Lenin said, "I'm sure he's not here."

"You're right, he can't be."

But little did they know, it could be, and he was.

END OF CHAPTER

(They also didn't know about the existence of Hilary Duff, who both Draco and Ebony expressed their displeasure with, while Lily and Wizard Lenin were too busy avoiding the concert entirely.

Also, Ebony and Draco would later make out keenly against a tree, and it was good.)

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** AN: Did u like? Leave a good reviow, and flammers stop flammin, okay! **


	3. Dumbledore's Headache

**AN: STOP FLAMING! If you flam it means you’re a prep or a psr. The only reason Luncheon agreed with Lee was cuz he had a headache, ok? And on top of that he’s a prep and jelus of Draco and Enboy. And Draco’s not a pedo cuz he’s not rlly twelve and nithr is Ebony, they just look like that rght noo because Lilee innst de right awge, nd they’re de sam age anyways so fook off!**

**P.S. I’m not updating until I get 5 good revows.**

**Fangs to The Carnivorous Muffin and all u other goffs, u rokc!**

**666**

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**666**

_In which Dumbledore has a headache, Draco serenades the gothic love of his life much to Default’s general displeasure, and Lily finally learns about sex from the worst possible source._

* * *

 

It appeared that Ebony and Draco hadn’t been eaten by bears or else stampeded to death by the crowd surrounding the band. Whether this was a good thing or a bad thing Lily wasn’t quite sure but she was starting to lean towards it being a rather unfortunate thing.

 

Late into the night, far past curfew on any normal night (although the rules seemed to have been suspended for the concert for whatever reason), when only unreasonable insomniacs like Wizard Lenin and Hermione Granger were awake (and Lily was forced to be awake because god forbid Wizard Lenin not have some form of entertainment lest he resort to killing Hermione), Ebony stomped her way into the room, black tears streaming down her face as she tore off her boots and threw them into the trunk beside her over decorative coffin.

 

(Lily had found that interesting, coffins were considered a bit uppity or at the very least passé by most modern vampires. You just couldn’t afford to lug around your own coffin anymore, that sort of furniture implied you had a formal place of residence, which, since many vampires were kind of homeless, was a bit of a rarity these days. As a result, they were considered a seventeenth or maybe nineteenth century prop of the bourgeois that now a days was just there to make you look richer and more powerful than you actually were.

 

That said, Ebony’s black polished ebony coffin, lined with hot pink velvet and black lace, was certainly a sight to behold.)

 

Wizard Lenin blinked, blinked again, began to get a very uncertain and rather apprehensive look on his face as he realized, yes Ebony really was stripping down to nothing as she stepped out of the leather dress, still with those rather impressive black tears rolling down her face.

 

At this point Wizard Lenin must have found whatever small cupcake of shame still lived inside of his soul, and turned his head, while Hermione just opened her mouth probably to tell Ebony that there were better places to do this.

But just as soon as Ebony had gotten out of one dress she was already getting herself into another one, one just as formal and ridiculous looking as the last. This one was also low cut, accentuating Ebony’s non-existent prepubescent breasts, black, but instead of being made of leather was instead satin with various red ribbons stylishly woven in and out of the fabric. She then traded her black lace up boots for a pair of black stilettos that put her at a respectable height for a sixteen-year-old and a freakishly tall height for a twelve-year-old.

 

Finally, with a cry of rage and or anguish, Ebony turned to her captive peanut gallery, “Those fooking prep teachers!”

 

Lily looked at Wizard Lenin, then Hermione, then back to Ebony. Apparently, with a lack of any other choices as the rest of Default had normal sleep schedules like normal people (well except for Rabbit who was staring eerily into space as always), Ebony appeared to be talking to them.

 

Only a quick glance at her comrades told her that neither Hermione nor Lenin were about to play along with this but that Ebony seemed insistent that they did play along.

 

“Oh, uh, what have those prepping professors done this time?” Lily asked with what she felt was a requisite amount of hesitation and uncertainty. After all, she still wasn’t entirely sure what the word ‘prep’ meant.

 

Ebony strode over, sitting on Lily’s bed (the one closest to the chairs and the oversized Rambocorn painting where they were all currently sitting), and heaved a great sigh of rage, “Draco took me to das concert, right? After we drank beer and got tee-shirts and got autographs and photos from Joel and Bengee. And Draco flew us back in his limo, but we didn’t go to Hogwarts, we went into the Forbidden Forest!”

 

Ebony paused, staring at her audience, appearing to be waiting for some reaction that none of them had to give. In Lily’s case because she was tired beyond comprehension and just couldn’t parse Ebony’s strangely accented English.

 

Finally, when it appeared Ebony was waiting for a verbal answer, Lily said, “Yes, alright, Forbidden Forest, extremely forbidden, and Draco’s car, also forbidden… Go on.”

 

“And then I asked him what the fook he thought he was doing, but he didn’t say, he just stared with all this sorrowful evilness and them me I him kissed me against a tree.”

 

Lily’s eyebrows raised, trying to figure out all the subjects in that last sentence, only really knowing that there had been some sort of kissing involved. With Draco. Which… Lily hadn’t given too much thought to romance, but if she were so inclined, Draco would not be high on that list.

 

Draco, in fact, might be towards the very bottom, in that lovely category of, “If we were the last two people on earth I would forsake my duty to humanity by refusing to procreate with you.”

 

“Alright, you and Draco, kissing, against a tree… Yes, um, fascinating stuff, do go on.” Lily said, nodding her head and smiling, feeling her internal ingrained responses to the Dursley’s kicking in where she would thoughtlessly give them what they wanted so she could leave that much sooner.

 

Lenin had never picked up that ability, which was really too bad, because it was so damn useful at times.

 

“And then he took off my top and I took off his shirt…”

 

This was getting very heated for a twelve-year-old romance.

 

“And I even took off my bra,”

 

Was she even wearing a bra to begin with?

 

“And I got all hot, and then he put his thingy in my you know what and we did it for the first time.”

 

Lily, Wizard Lenin, and Hermione stared with equal befuddlement and disbelief at Ebony. Finally, Wizard Lenin broke his silence, “You had intercourse, you had sexual intercourse in the Forbidden Forest, with Draco Malfoy, against a tree.”

 

Ebony nodded, and added an extra detail that no one particularly wanted to hear, “And then I think I even got an orgasm.”

 

Of course, Lily wasn’t entirely sure what an orgasm was, never really having a specific sex talk with either Wizard Lenin, Death, or any other authority figure in her life. Either way, after this, and seeing Wizard Lenin and Hermione’s faces (Wizard Lenin was blushing, how was he blushing, how was that even possible) Lily didn’t think she wanted to know.

 

Wizard Lenin placed his face into his hands, raked them back through his hair while letting out a long sigh, then he stood and began pacing and muttering to himself under his breath about something.

 

Probably how he was sick and tired of all this bullshit or else how Hogwarts was never this bizarre when he was a student. Lily had to say, this time she agreed with him on that last one.

 

Hermione coughed, spluttered to be accurate, and managed to get out, “…So, Ebony, where do the professors come into this story?”

 

“Well then Dumblydore came out of nowhere and shooted, ‘What do you think you are doing, you motherfuckers!”

 

Wizard Lenin spluttered, turned back to Ebony with raised eyebrows and a look on his face that was a cross between horror and complete and utter joy, “Did he really? Albus Dumbledore called you a motherfucker?”

 

Ebony nodded as tears began to streak down her face again, “He took me Draco and I to his office and called us ludicrous fools…”

 

“But he called you a motherfucker,” Wizard Lenin repeated, still with that awed look on his face, but then it faltered and disappeared, a darker and ultimately more familiar look of irritation taking its place, “He’s never called me a motherfucker,”

 

Lily blinked, looked at him, “Really?”

 

“Why would he call you a… motherfucker?” Hermione said after a moment’s hesitation, as if trying to wrap her lips around the word, the very sound of it leaving distaste in her mouth.

 

“No, he’s always been above that sort of thing. Cursing the enemy would just have proved me right, it makes it that much more difficult to be holier than thou when one curses like the common sailor.” Wizard Lenin said, apparently too tired to even care that Hermione was sitting right there next to him looking at him in extreme alarm as she tried to piece together why Dumbledore would even care who Lenin Rabbitson was.

 

“And here he is calling Enboy Way, whose greatest crime to date has been having horrifically underage sex with Draco Malfoy while breaking curfew in the Forbidden Forest, a motherfucker.” Wizard Lenin said, motioning to Ebony as if she was an insult to his very existence, and finally he concluded, “This, Ellie, is very clearly bullshit.”

 

“He had a headache!” Ebony shouted in response, a flush appearing on her own pale cheeks.

 

“He has a headache,” Wizard Lenin repeated dully, a flat look entering his eyes, “Well, thank god it was only a headache. Lord only knows what depths he’d descend to if his entire nation was tearing itself apart.”

 

“Anyways, so, Dumbledore called you a motherfucker, was that it?” Lily asked, because really, Dumbledore had said much worse to her, even if it hadn’t been quite as littered with profanities. Of course, he hadn’t said it in so many words, but he’d kind of implied that she was more soulless and damned than Wizard Lenin. And of course, there’d been that rather odd Dursley conversation.

 

“No, then he tuk us to his office and Snap and McGonagall were thar and they called us mediocre dunces but then Draco said he loved me and we went back to our common rooms.”

 

“Oh… That was… A story.” Lily finished rather lamely, and decided that it was probably about time for her to head to bed. And judging by Wizard Lenin’s expression as well as Hermione’s they were thinking more or less the same thing (which given their sleep schedules was bizarre).

 

“Well, goodnight Ebony see you in the…”

 

Lily turned, there, in the doorway, was none other than Draco Malfoy, still in those stupid looking black baggy pants, with the eyeliner, and the foundation, except now he was singing, in the entrance to the Default common room which he should not have been able to find.

 

_“I need an alarm system in my house so I know when people are creeping about,”_

 

He wasn’t bad, not good, but not horrendous either. He was vaguely tolerable, sort of like the elementary school concerts that she and Dudders were forced into when they were younger. And the first two lines of the song Lily could very much relate to, wishing she had an alarm system right about that moment too.

 

Still, if Lily was going to break into song at the entrance to someone’s dormitory for the sake of love and romance, she would have felt My Fair Lady’s “On the Street Where You Live” would be the better choice. 

 

_“These people are freaking me out (these days),”_

 

Or not, this was a surprisingly appropriate choice of song. Granted, it was not a very romantic one, but a glance at Ebony told Lily that Ebony apparently digged this sort of a thing. The black tears of eyeliner, and some thicker substance that at a distance Lily could almost think was blood, seemed to have stopped at any rate.

 

_“It’s getting hectic everywhere that I go, they won’t leave me alone, there’s things they all wanna know,”_

 

Surprisingly, this song was really speaking to Lily. Everything was getting hectic wherever she went, first there was the whole Chamber thing going on, or well, Wizard Lenin’s other half declaring war on the school and disposing of school children, but now there was also Ebony Way and strange Hogsmede concerts with bands she’d never even heard of.

 

And everyone blamed her for everything and never seemed to leave her alone, or well, not alone in the way she wanted. And all they wanted to know were things she didn’t want to tell them, things they had no business knowing, or things they insisted were true but really weren’t.

 

Lily took everything back, this was an extremely appropriate song, so much so that she could almost ignore the fact that Draco Malfoy was singing it in the middle of the night inside the doorway of the Default common room.

 

Apparently though, Wizard Lenin did not feel that the song was appropriate for the occasion or setting.

 

Lenin Rabbitson walked up to Draco with a pleasant smile, and still with that pleasant smile, brought his fist up and slammed it into Draco’s nose, pushing him out the doorway and into the hallway and effectively cutting off his serenading.

 

Behind Lenin Ebony shrieked in terror, “Draco!”

 

Draco sprawled on the floor, his nose beginning to bleed, as he stared up in Wizard Lenin in complete shock and dawning fear, as if he’d just remembered that Lenin Rabbitson was a boy who’d survived the deaths of all his relatives as well as a vampire coup. Wizard Lenin just offered his pleasant smile as he slammed the door in Draco’s face, “And stay out.”

 

Needless to say, Ebony was not pleased. She pushed Wizard Lenin and cried out, “You fucking prep!”

 

“Communist, please Enoby, the term is communist,” Wizard Lenin said, brushing off his lapels as if her mere touch had dirtied them somehow.

Ebony didn’t seem to care what to call it, instead she glared at him, pushed him aside, and made her way out the door to follow Draco back to the Slytherin common room, where if habits held, they would probably be sidetracked and have sex on the moving staircases.

 

Suddenly Lily was much less eager to walk down those staircases than usual in the morning.

 

Hermione stared at Wizard Lenin, and her expression changed from blankness to one of disgruntled and reluctant gratitude, “Lenin, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I believe I owe you a soda,”

 

Wizard Lenin considered this, musing for a moment as he stood there triumphant, and then said, “Make it a butterbeer and you have a deal,”

 

END OF CHAPTER

 

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**AN: Isn’t Draco just so hawt?**


	4. The Masque of Red Death

**AN: Shit up preps, ok! Dumbldoor has headaches too sometimes, there serius problemz that a loot of people have! And he was real mad becuz he tinks Ebony and Draco are too young and he doesn’t like hawt boyz.**

**P.S. I will noot update unless I get good revows!!!**

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_In which Lenin becomes the unfortunate victim of the infamous spit take multiple times, Hogwarts seems to have received yet another transfer student in the form of Ellie Potter’s morbidly embarrassing twin brother, and Lily’s feelings not only catch up with her but threaten to overwhelm her entirely._

* * *

 

 

Breakfast was a time of deep philosophical discussion at the Default table, there they talked of time, reality, death, the meaning of life, Rabbit’s rapidly growing sentience, but mostly bickered about Potions, the latest Lily conspiracy theory, and whether any of them actually cared about winning quidditch.

 

However, of all the things Lily could have wasted some thought on before the day marched onwards, from the abstract like the existence of God to the almost lethally real in the heir of Slytheirn, she found her mind stuck on the subject of Ebony Way, “How does she have so many different outfits?”

 

Ebony was chatting it up at the Slytherin table, practically sitting in Draco’s lap, which in itself was causing something of a scene (and did seem to be causing rage induced migraines across the staff table, except in Hagrid, and the astronomy professor who appeared to have gotten a complete makeover herself), but more than that she was in a completely different, previously unseen, yet just as ridiculous outfit as the day before.

 

This time she was in a black miniskirt which was frayed and torn at the hem and a tight black matching top decorated in grinning red skulls all completed by another pair of lace up high heeled boots that went up to her knees, to match this were two pairs of skull earrings and silver earring crucifixes, and to top it all off Enoby’s black hair had been spray painted purple to completely clash with the red of her shirt.

 

And she had managed to get this all done before even showing up to breakfast and getting maybe two hours of sex free sleep at maximum.

 

“Isn’t that a thing girls do, have different outfits?” Blaise asked, receiving glares from his female compatriots who didn’t appreciate that kind of tone, “What? Just because Ellie Potter looks like brightly colored muggle trash doesn’t mean most people have to.”

 

“Blaise, do tell me, what exactly does Ebony look like right now?”

 

Blaise squinted at Ebony as she raked her pale fingers through Draco’s hair, which Draco strangely did not seem to mind at all, “Well, monochromatic muggle trash, obviously.”

 

“Goth, Blaise, she looks like a goth,” Hermione corrected with a certain amount of disgust, probably being somewhat ashamed that she knew that word, whatever that word was.

 

“Wait, so you actually know what a goff is?”

 

“Goth,” Hermione corrected, this time not even bothering to remotely hide her irritation with Blaise, “It’s counterculture, essentially.”

 

“Counterculture, Hermione, Lenin is counterculture. That seems like a very broad genre to stuff someone like Ebony Way and… Draco, into.” Lily pointed out, after all, rock and roll had been counterculture at one point, and so had the hippies, being counterculture was barely a culture at all.

 

“I am not into counterculture,” Lenin said rather stiffly, looking far more irritated by that undoubtedly true statement than he had any right to.

 

“Lenin, you’re a communist, you’re a communist in a world where even the communists don’t want to be communists.” Lily pointed out, because as the Berlin wall had finally fallen the year before, it was a clear marker that Lenin was now considered passé.

 

“…You, of all people, should know there’s something wrong with your logic,” Wizard Lenin said, “Besides, counterculture doesn’t quite seem to cover it.”

 

“Oh, you mean the Satanism thing? Well, she hasn’t sacrificed goats yet… But yes, I guess that’s more cult than it is counterculture.” Clearly, when you started openly admitting to worshipping the origin of evil, then you had gone far beyond your normal teen rebellion into something altogether unnerving.

 

“Goth is a kind of counterculture, not that I can speak for the Satanism,” Hermione snapped at the pair of them before rubbing at the bridge of her nose and admitting, “Though, that said, I don’t actually know that much about it.”

 

They all stared across the hall at Ebony for a few moments, each trying to come to their own conclusion of what microcosm of society she was representing, and Lily found herself rather stumped.

 

“I think it’s a method of attracting mates,” Luna finally chimed in with a bright and eager look in her eyes and she motioned over to Draco and Ebony, “She drains herself of color, accentuating in bright reds and purples as needed, and the male then adopts her ways and the pair begin a very intricate and drawn out mating dance that involves muggle flying cars and listening to the warblings of very scary sounding people.”

 

“…That actually makes a surprising amount of sense,” Lily commented with a grimace, “I’m not sure how I feel about that, or the idea of Draco Malfoy mating.”

 

“Isn’t he slated to mate with Pansy Parkinson?” Wizard Lenin asked rather critically as he stared at the pair with a flat expression.

 

“No, Draco’s engaged to my younger sister, Astoria,” Daphne protested, but not quite with the pride one would expect from a future in law, “Of course, given Draco’s latest antics, I’m sure if he keeps this up until he’s eighteen then father will have no qualms annulling the engagement.”

 

“You must be thrilled,” Wizard Lenin commented.

 

“Well, I suppose it is an upside to having to stare at this new… dark muggle version of Malfoy.” Daphne said with a small shudder, Draco’s very appearance causing her physical discomfort, not that Lily couldn’t relate to that feeling.

 

It was at that point that Ebony decided she wanted food or else was done humiliating Draco in front of the entire school, because she walked back over to the Default table with all the confidence of poise of Wizard Lenin himself, completely unconcerned by the lack of enthusiasm greeting her as Hermione’s head hit the table.

 

“Please tell me she’s not coming back,” Hermione groaned.

 

“Would you like the truth or a pleasant fiction?” Lily asked, but this just caused Hermione to groan louder and place her hands over her head.

 

Ebony sat at the table, pouring herself a bowl of Count Chocula’s cereal, which she then filled to the brim with blood, she then poured the extra blood into a glass, seeming unconcerned by the clots beginning to form at the surface or the way it oozed out of the glass as she tipped it back, or how none of them could seem to look away.

 

“…Holy shit, I forgot she was a vampire,” Blaise said, before holding a hand to his mouth, turning somewhat green in complexion, and muttering, “I’ll see you all in class, I uh… Have to go, not be here…”

 

Blaise then dashed out of the hallway without once looking back.

 

Daphne lasted a few minutes longer, until Ebony started digging into the chocolatey blood flakes, and then also turned a rather fetching shade of Slytherin green and slinked her way out of the Great Hall to loiter outside the doors to the Potions classroom.

 

Which just left Lily, who had long since been desensitized to blood, violence, and cannibalism, a rather dazed looking Luna Lovegood, Hermione Granger, Wizard Lenin, and Rabbit.

 

And they sat there and just stared at her wordlessly as Ebony Way just kept on trucking with an enthusiasm that was both unwarranted and off putting.

 

Or at least, they were until some poor shmuck’s shoulder bumped into Ebany, tilting her forward and into the bowl of afterbirth masquerading as cereal that she had been holding, causing the blood to spill all over her shirt and hair, painting her an even more disturbed version of Carrie at the prom.

 

“Bastard!” Ebony shouted, grabbing hold of her assaulter’s arm and twisting him round to face her, but as soon as she saw his face she stopped.

 

And Lily stopped too.

 

She knew she had seen him at that concert.

 

From a distance, for an instant, she had seen the face she would recognize anywhere in the world. The face of a man who had been more of a father to her than James Potter ever could have dreamed of being.

 

Younger, much younger, her age, but the fine aristocratic nose was his, the gentle strained smile that tried so hard to remember what true happiness tasted like, the pale almost mask like quality of his face, and the raven’s feather hair curling at the ends as hers often did.

 

And for a moment all the alarming gut wrenching differences, the youth, the lack of scar, the strange blood red streaks in his hair, the dripping over done eyeliner that was beginning to streak down his cheeks, the black stained lips, and the scarlet shade of his irises that matched Ebony’s spilled blood didn’t seem to matter at all.

 

And then they mattered, they mattered more than anything in the world.

 

“I’m so sorry,” his voice had the tone she remembered, soft and with a hint of uncertainty for all its confidence, almost shy, but filled with kindness more than anything else. Except he was looking at Ebony, and Ebony was staring back, her eyes strangely hungry as they raked over him, dissecting him piece by piece and fitting him back together in the most aesthetic way her mind could manage.

 

He wasn’t looking at Lily at all, even if those words seemed to be for her, more for her than Ebony, “I’m so sorry, Lily,”

 

“That’s alright,” Ebony said, leaning forward, gripping his hand between her own (his scar, “I must not tell lies”, had been taken from him along with his age and his eye color, a jarring blankness was left in its place), “What’s your name?”

 

“And let me guess, you’re a transfer student from Albania,” Hermione cut in, and from the look on her face she thought she was being clever, but neither Wizard Lenin nor Lily had eyes for her right then. Wizard Lenin was drinking his tea slowly, staring at Death with eyes like knives, with no thought for anyone else at the table. And to Lily, Hermione Granger had never seemed less significant than she did right then and there.

 

“Ah, no, I’m afraid I’m very English,” Death offered with that same smile, before taking a seat next to Ebony and addressing her, “My name’s Harry Potter, although most people call me Vampire these days.”

 

Wizard Lenin spit out his tea and began to choke, Luna once again serving as Default’s default Heimlich performer as she swatted him on the back until he could take in a gasp of air, but even then, he seemed to have difficult talking as he tried sipping at his tea again.

 

Lily, for her own part, wasn’t doing much better.

 

In fact, her brain seemed to have shut down entirely, only distantly noting that Death was looking a bit (rightfully) embarrassed by this fact, only just grumbling it out.

 

There was a gleam to Rabbit’s eyes and the normally unflappable Luna even looked somewhat concerned by the turn of events. Hermione, for her own part, seemed to have somehow managed to leave her own body, her mind no doubt in the Scottish Highlands by this point, far away from the Great Hall and Vampire Potter.

 

“Oh, are you related to captain Ellie then?” Luna asked, before whispering to Lily, “Is he your secret twin brother raised by the fair folk for protection from the prophecy?”

 

But Lily had nothing to say, no answer to that, because all she could do was just stare.

 

In fact, the only one who looked remarkably intrigued and at ease was Ebony who asked, clearly harking back to before Luna had asked her own question, “Why?”

 

Death cheerfully smiled, his darkened lips somehow making the expression look grotesque, a mockery of all human sentiment, and even as he talked those wretched lips let loose a few giggles that seemed out of place, time, and all that was right and good in the world, “Because I love the taste of human blood.”

 

Wizard Lenin choked on his tea a second time, Luna again rushing to his aid, whacking his back even harder this time. When he came back to himself he breathed out, and looked at his tea with strange trepidation, as if he wasn’t sure if he wanted to tempt fate anymore.

 

Ebony just nodded and then leaned towards him with sparkling blue eyes and confided, “Well, I am a vampire.”

 

“Really?” Death, no, Vampire, whimpered as opposed to asked, a strange thread of uncertainty and fear entering his voice as he stared at her.

 

“Yeah!” Ebony roared, leaning so far towards him that Vampire had to lean backwards, his back almost touching the bench.

 

Death grinned back then, straightening up as Ebony leaned backwards, pouring himself a tall cool glass of clotting blood as well as a bowl of Count Chocula’s massacred remains with blood for milk.

 

And then he started chugging it, not an ounce of hesitation in him as he tilted his head back, and the cold, refrigerated, clotting blood oozed down his throat.

 

Hermione stood, stared flatly at Vampire and Ebony the vampire, and said in a curiously calm voice, “I think I’m going to head to Potions now,”

 

But Lily couldn’t leave, she just kept staring, and in her mind as she watched a story began to unfold, of a castle in isolation, revelry, and an illness of blood that led fools, kings, bishops, and maidens into its timeless dance of death, and familiar gothic words to accompany them.

 

_“And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revelers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”_

 

And Lily did not even notice when Draco Malfoy appeared at their table, telling Ebony he had a surprise for her, leaving Death in the form of Vampire Potter behind.

 

END OF CHAPTER

 

(Later, when even Vampire had wandered off to class, and Lily, Luna, Rabbit, and Wizard Lenin were well and truly beyond tardy, did Luna say, “I can see why you’ve never mentioned him.”)

 

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**AN: BTW, Vampire luuks like Joel Madden and if u dont no who tat is den fook u prep!**


	5. Draco's Lithe Pale Body

**AN: Well OK you guys, I’m only writting this cuz I got 5 god reviews and btw I won’t write the next chapter til I get 10 good vuns! Stop flaming or I’ll report you! Evony and Lily aren’t a Mary Sue, ok? They aren’t perfect. Ebony is a Satinist and she has problems she’s depressed for god’s sake. And Lily can’t talk to people, and u can blme The Carnivorous Muffin for her.**

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_In which Lily and Lenin discuss the origins of Vampire Potter in order to assuage Lily’s concerns, Lily sees more of Draco’s anatomy than she ever wanted to see in her life, and Lily realizes a horrible truth about her own nature._

* * *

 

Lily felt as if she was trapped in some sort of a dream, her ability to think and process was gone, so that she was just staring at the front of the classroom in Potions with no real idea how she got there or what she was supposed to be doing.

 

Nothing seemed to register, not Lenin Rabbitson barking at her for ingredients or Snape glowering down, or anything at all. It all seemed distant to that feeling of complete and utter catastrophe which gripped the school.

 

Every once in a while, she found herself gazing at the back of Vampire Potter’s, Death’s, head as he sat there next to a rather dubious looking Neville Longbottom (which was unfortunate because Death didn’t appear to be that good at Potions either).

 

Although why Hermione wasn’t partnered with Neville was anyone’s guess, since it was her turn and all. Speaking of which, she actually hadn’t seen Hermione yet, so maybe Hermione had decided to take a health day, Lily probably could have used a health day.

 

And she just…

 

“You’re being ridiculous,” Wizard Lenin said as he stirred the potion du jour with the wand he seemed to have more or less permanently borrowed from Lily, “Even for you.”

 

“Sorry,” Lily said, blinking and blinking again, trying to think back. When was the last time she’d seen Death? Things had been so busy with the Slytherin heir hunt but… He hadn’t seemed out of the ordinary, he’d seemed the same as he always was, and granted he had his problems to deal with but…

 

Lily’s half-hearted apology just seemed to make Wizard Lenin only that much more irritated, “Did it ever occur to you that it’s not him?”

 

Yes, but also no, because he looked too similar, granted there were large glaring differences, but it was his face, even some part of his presence was the same but also… “Who is he supposed to be if it’s not him?”

 

“Ellie,” Wizard Lenin said with a truly aggravated sigh, “I truly hate to have to say this, but perhaps Luna Lovegood has a point, and you have… A secret twin brother who I never heard about.”

 

Lily stared at Lenin Rabbitson, at his look of reluctant embarrassment but determination as he stood by his words, and such was his shame that she didn’t even have to point out what he just said for him to feel the need to start blurting justifications.

 

“It… Makes some marginally small amount of sense if you don’t take logistics into account... There is motive there, large motive, such to call for drastic measures on the part of your parents and Dumbledore for that matter. There’s… rumor… of a prophecy, delivered just before your birth, about a boy born at the end of July with the capability of destroying the dark lord. Now, as it stands, only Neville Longbottom fits the bill completely.”

 

Lily’s eyes darted to Neville, sweet, slightly pudgy, utterly incapable of destroying anything, Neville Longbottom. Neville Longbottom who apparently had the capability of annihilating Wizard Lenin. Then they slowly dragged themselves back to the entirely unamused and irate looking Lenin Rabbitson.

 

“Yes,” Lenin said, “I know. Now, you would have fit the prophecy if it weren’t for the unfortunate fact that you’re the wrong gender. However, if you had a younger twin brother…”

 

Lily stared for a few moments and then felt the gears inside of her head turning as she put together the similarity between their own features rather than simply his similarity to Death who had always had some features in common with her, “Oh,”

 

“Oh indeed,” Wizard Lenin repeated, still looking rather annoyed, as he always did around Neville now that she thought about it. He’d always seemed to find Neville both incredibly underwhelming and somehow disappointing and for the first time that was all starting to sink together.

 

Except, more than that, her eyes darted to… Vampire, Vampire not Death, because surely if she were to die now and visit him Death would be fine and where he had always been and was it any less ridiculous that she had a secret twin brother than Death himself entered into her plane of existence? Except if she had a twin brother capable of destroying not only Hindenburg but Wizard Lenin too then…

 

“Oh,” Lily said slightly louder this time and then with a sense of alarm, “Oh my god you’re going to kill my little brother!”

 

This was said loudly enough that Neville and Vampire both glanced backwards at her, along with Daphne and Blaise, some rather Ebony-ish looking girl (who Lily could have sworn wasn’t there earlier) who bore a strange passing resemblance to Hermione, and the rest of the class.

 

Lily offered them a sheepish grin as Wizard Lenin smacked a hand against his face.

 

“Uh,” Lily started and then let out a rather strained fake laugh, “Oh, that was a great joke, wasn’t it Lenin? Because communists kill people, eh? Eh?”

 

“…I have absolutely nothing to say to you.” Wizard Lenin muttered in that tone he usually reserved for when he was dearly wishing he could maim something.

 

There were a few traded glances, a sharp, “Ten points from Default for disrupting the class, Potter, you ludicrous fool!” and then slowly but surely everyone returned to their own work leaving Lenin Rabbitson and Lily to their own devices once again.

 

And Lily returned her attention to Wizard Lenin, “Can you at least save killing him until I get to know him?”

 

“Lily, you’ve barely spoken with him, and he calls himself Vampire,”

 

“I’m pretty sure he said other people call him Vampire, isn’t his name Harry or John or something?” Lily asked, trying to recall, really she was so distracted by the sight of him chug-a-lugging blood with Ebony Way that she’d sort of forgotten everything else he’d said.

 

“Because he likes the taste of human blood,” Wizard Lenin responded dully, echoing Vampire’s, no Harry’s, words from earlier.

 

“…We all have our vices.” Lily said in a rather strained voice. 

 

“Strange, I’ve been guilty of many vices and yet cannibalism has never been one of them.” Wizard Lenin said in a musing sort of way, “You know, there are many magical maladies that befall those who partake in human flesh.”

Lily had nothing to say to that.

 

“Wendigo, I believe is the American term for it, the transformation into a soulless deformed incarnation of famine and greed.”

 

“Yes, well, we’ll have to work on that…” Lily said, now eyeing the back of Vampire’s head more critically.

 

“And his fashion sense?” Wizard Lenin asked with raised eyebrows, now also eyeing the back of Vampire’s head with distaste.

 

“I’d think the cannibalism would take precedence over the clothing.” Lily snapped back, but despite this she did feel… not so much better as more with it, more grounded, less uncertain about the world she lived in.

 

Granted, she still needed to see Death, the true Death, at her nearest convenience, and un-brainwash her mysterious surprise younger brother who was apparently either raised by Satanists or elves or elves who were Satanists, stop Wizard Lenin from killing her surprise Satanist younger brother before Lily decided he was a lost cause, and get back to dealing with Wizard Lenin’s other half and whatever else he was up to but… Well, it was something at least.

 

That, of course, was when Ebony stomped into the room.

 

And when Lily said stomp she meant stomped, stomped in those black high healed lace-up boots she’d been wearing earlier, along with the same blood soaked clothing as earlier. Which, really, given that Ebony apparently had an infinite number of outfits and had planned on skipping most class, why didn’t she just change into something else?

 

Ebony pointed a pale accusing finger at Lily’s warped younger brother Vampire, er Harry, “Vampire Potter, you motherfucker!”

 

The motherfucker in question put down his supplies to stare at Ebony, not with the dumbfounded blankness that everyone else was staring at him with, but with legitimate concern and hurt in his eyes. Clearly, for whatever reason, Harry deeply cared what Ebony thought of him, which really was beyond Lily as Lily couldn’t even bring herself to be mildly concerned over Ebony’s opinions.

 

Really, Ebony was just kind of this weird almost glitch like thing that just burst into places and completely derailed whatever was going on only to leave just as soon as she’d come. There was no point in having any sort of opinion about her…

 

And it was at that point that Lily had the horrifying realization, that from some perspectives, Lily and Ebony actually had a lot in common.

 

Of course, before Lily could confess this horrifying thought aloud to Wizard Lenin and apologize for all the times she’d Ebony’d a situation, Draco Malfoy charged in.

 

Only, he’d decided to compromise between changing his outfit and staying in the same one as this morning, because he’d decided to wear nothing at all. Absolutely nothing, not even boxers, or socks. He was barefoot and bare-assed in the Potions classroom and Lily was staring straight at his dick, which seemed a bit large for a twelve year old’s… Unless it wasn’t, and Lily had no idea what these things were supposed to look like, which was all too possible.

 

All the same Lily found herself shuddering uncontrollably as he brain processes once again shut down.

 

Draco got down on his knees in front of Ebony, still very naked and probably freezing his ass off, his eyes brimming with tears as he screamed, “Ebony, it’s not what you think!” 

 

Lily looked around the room and caught sight of Hermione’s Ebony-esq twin who was smiling in both sympathy and understanding at the enraged Ebony. Which, perhaps was understandable, given that she looked a little too much like Ebony for comfort, what with the waist length curling black hair, the strange crimson eyes (which really were starting to spread like a disease or something), and the skin paler even than Lily’s.

 

Lily decided she didn’t even want to know.

 

“What is it that you desire, you ridiculous dimwit?!” Snape demanded from the front of the room, which… Well, he clearly was running out of insults as he was normally quite proud of his scathing wit. That or Draco’s nudity had shocked him into using ‘ridiculous dimwit’ and hoping it stuck.

 

But Ebony ignored Snape and Draco and continued to stare directly at Harry, this time with a look befitting of Caesar with a knife in his back, “Vampire, I can’t believe you cheated on me with Draco!”

 

Lily started choking on nothing beside her she could almost feel Wizard Lenin’s brain hitting a solid brick wall along with Lily’s. Where was Hermione when you needed her, because surely her brain would have jumped off a cliff by this point too?

 

Lily’s baby brother, so innocent, so… frankly kind of bizarre and worrying, and Draco Malfoy. Not just Draco Malfoy, but the worst possible incarnation of Draco Malfoy. Clearly, Wizard Lenin had the initial right idea, Lily would have no choice but to kill Draco Malfoy.

 

Then Lily’s brain stopped again, wait, Vampire (Harry) had just appeared this morning, how could he have dated Draco if he’d only just shown up? So, then, Ebony was just insane. Oh, well, that was too bad for Ebony but very good for the honor of the Potter family.

 

Lily felt a sense of relief bubbling through her as she sighed and leaned back in her chair, feeling as if she had just dodged a very large bullet of shame and embarrassment.

 

“I don’t know why Ebony is so mad at me,” Draco confessed tearfully to the audience, clearly at his wit’s end (along with the rest of the audience), “I had went out with Vampire, I’m bi and so is Ebony, for a while, but then he broke my heart! He dumped me because he liked Britany, that stupid preppy fucker! We were just good friends now, he had gone through horrible problems, and now he was gothic. Ha ha, like I would hang out with a prep!”

 

Vampire stood rather awkwardly, looking across the room then to Ebony as he held up his hands in surrender, “But I’m not going out with Draco anymore.”

 

Lily winced again as Vampire confirmed what she’d just dismissed, except, no because he still wasn’t here long enough to have dated Draco. Unless they’d been caught in some strange Satanic hell dimension where they’d had no choice but to date each other… for the survival of the human race… despite both of them being men.

 

“Yeah fucking right! Fuck off you bastard!” Ebony screamed, before grabbing a Potions’ textbook from the table closest to her and throwing it with surprising accuracy at Harry’s head.

 

It hit Harry square in the forehead, which sent him stumbling backwards into Wizard Lenin and Lily’s potion, which then of course tipped over and began to melt through the table, which caused Wizard Lenin to perform a daring rescue of their textbooks and he threw both him and Lily backwards into the next table behind them, this cauldron actually falling off onto the floor, where it soon began to melt through the stones and emit a rather lethal looking gas.

 

Ebony, meanwhile, had stomped back out of the classroom, leaving the rest of them in there.

 

And Lily, staring in horror at her younger brother with terrible taste in men, at Hermione’s weird Ebony twin, at naked Draco, and at Snape screaming about mediocre dunces and house points from Default to last into the next century, put her head into her hands and screamed.  

 

END OF CHAPTER

 

(After a few seconds of rage screaming at the ineffability of the universe and everything going inconceivably wrong all at once, Wizard Lenin patted her awkwardly on the shoulder, and said, “Well, I hope you feel better now.”

 

And no, Lily did not feel better, not at all.)

 

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**AN: Aren’t bi guyz just so hot?**


	6. The Hollow Men

**AN: Stop flamming, OK! I don’t read all de books, this is from the movie, OK, so it’s not my fault if Dumbledoor swers. Beseweds, I said he has a headache. And the reason Snap doesn’t like Harry now is cuz he’s Christian and Vampire is a Satanist. MCR ROCKS!**

**666**

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**666**

_In which Lily decides that the latest conspiracy is afoot and everyone needs to start doing something about it dammit, Hermione Granger joins the dark side, and Harry reveals a horrifying secret._

* * *

 

Lily decided to convene an emergency Default meeting the likes of which Default had never seen, or at least, not since Wizard Lenin’s other homicidal half had started plaguing the school with giant snakes he kept in the basement.

 

And when she said decided she really meant that she’d dragged a rather reluctant Blaise Zabini, an even more reluctant Daphne Greengrass, a rather put upon Lenin Rabbitson, her warped little brother Harry ‘Vampire’ Potter, all back up eight flights of moving stair cases to the Default common room regardless of protests and then had bent time and space itself to her whims in order to summon forth Luna, Rabbit, and the missing Hermione Granger from whatever forsaken corner of the castle they’d found themselves in… Which somehow also managed to summon Hermione’s weird Ebony twin instead of Hermione, who then refused to leave, but Lily supposed you couldn’t win all of them.

 

Which left Lily standing in front of her peers by a conjured chalk board, while her Defaultian comrades all sat in their striped, polka-dotted, and mismatched comfy chairs in front of both her and Rambo’s terrifying visage and the painting behind her.

 

“Alright, everyone, I think we all know why we’re here,” Lily started with complete and utter authority that belonged to generals let alone quidditch captains with a losing streak a mile wide by mid-November.

 

Blaise raised his hand like the sarcastic asshole that he was, “Actually, Ellie, I have no idea why I’m here.”

 

Lily glared down at him wordlessly, with apparently enough ire to cause him to lower his hand and grin at her rather sheepishly, withdrawing his comment.

 

Which was good, Lily then wrote a single stark white line of text on the chalk board, one she felt spoke for itself, “We’re here, my friends, because of something I’ve come to refer to as the goffick problem,”

 

“…Seriously?” Daphne asked.

 

Lily conjured a Gilderoy Lockhart text book which she threw with deadly speed and accuracy at Daphne’s attractive head, “This is a serious problem, Greengrass! It was fine when it was just Draco Malfoy, even if it was Draco Malfoy without clothes, and it was Draco Malfoy having underage sex with Ebony Way. I mean, it’s not my problem, right? Actually, for once in my life it’s not my problem at all, which is a rather odd disconcerting feeling… But that’s beside the point! Because, now it involves my little brother and I won’t stand for it!”

 

“Wait, I’m confused, your what?” Blaise asked.

 

“Oh, right,” Lily sighed and motioned to Harry, trying not to feel too embarrassed and failing rather miserably (it wasn’t his fault, he was just… brainwashed), “Everyone, this is my secret younger twin brother, hidden by my parents with a cult of Satanists apparently, who I didn’t know existed until this morning… His name is Harry.”

 

“But people call me Vampire,” Harry chimed in, with that awkward embarrassed smile of his own, which would be adorable if he hadn’t just said what he’d just said.

 

“Harry, do shut up,” Lily responded.

 

“Wait, they call you what? Why do they call you Vampire, you’re not Albanian too are you?” Blaise asked, looking at Harry with dubious eyebrows.

 

“It’s not important why they call him…”

 

Harry cut Lily off before she could even get started, “Because I love the taste of human blood!”

 

Blaise and Daphne blinked, looked at each other, and then looked at Lily with raised, dubious, eyebrows.

 

Lily felt her face flushing with secondhand embarrassment for Harry, “As you can see, we’re clearly starting to have a problem.”

 

“You mean you have a problem,” Blaise pointed out, “I hardly see how this is a ‘we’ type of issue.”

 

“No, Zabini, I mean we. Luna if you would please tally the evidence of the grand goffick conspiracy presented to us thus far,” Lily said motioning for Luna to dart up to the board and take the piece of chalk from Lily.

 

“Well, let’s see, first Ebony Way appeared at breakfast,” Luna said, writing down the name ‘Ebony Darkness Dementia Raven Way’ up on the board in looping barely legible writing complete with strange looking circular creatures over the i’s.

 

“I object, that was clearly your doing, Potter,” Blaise pointed out.

 

“Oh, you’d think that but…”

 

“Actually, as one of the people Ellie Potter has presented to the school at breakfast I’m going to have to agree with Ellie on this one. Has she ever shirked responsibility for this sort of a thing before? If she’s saying that Enoby isn’t hers then Enoby isn’t hers,” Wizard Lenin commented even as he flipped through a rather thick book on magical theory, clearly not paying all that much attention to the proceedings, probably since he was more or less set on murdering Lily’s surprise younger brother anyways.

 

…Lily was going to have to do something about that.

 

Blaise and Daphene looked dubious, as they always did, and Lily decided to ignore them, “Alright, Luna, next point on our list.”

 

“Second was the appearance of the nargles,” Luna said, and then catching the eyes of everyone she insisted, “Oh, it’s not the regular type of nargle, these are different. This is the goff nargle that comes from Finland, clearly a goff nargle infected Draco Malfoy’s brain turning him into the loveable goffick Draco Malfoy we know and love today.”

 

None of them said anything for a moment, before Lily said, “Right, I was going to say Draco’s overnight conversion to Satanism, but goff nargles work too.”

 

“Third,” Lily continued, staring straight at her audience even as Luna wrote, “Was the GC concert, which none of us were told about beforehand, but somehow all of our classes were cancelled so we could attend.”

 

Lily began pacing even as she spoke and Luna desperately scribbled to keep up, “Fourth, the hellish rain-snow, which by the way, is still somehow going, and yet somehow hasn’t managed to destroy the Hogwarts landscaping.”

 

“Fifth, Draco’s flying car, and the drugs, and then the sex with Ebony!”

 

“Is sixth your Albanian brother?”

 

“…Yes, but he’s also English,” Lily said, not even giving Harry a chance to interrupt since God only knew what would come out of his mouth.

 

“I think yoo all are a bunch of fucker preps,” Hermione’s goffick twin commented with a look of derision and complete and utter contempt (which was actually very Hermione-esq in nature and was very well done).

 

“And finally, we have this!” Lily said motioning to their guest, “Hermione’s evil goffick twin thing from the abyss who appeared out of nowhere in Potions’ class! Ladies and gentlemen, the latest point of evidence in the wave of goffisim that has taken over the castle!”

 

“I was actually going to ask about her,” Wizard Lenin said, closing his book and glancing at her, “Not to be rude, or anything, but who exactly are you and how are you related to Hermione Granger?”

 

The girl scoffed, “I’m noot Hermoine Granger, that’s my fake fooking prep name my fake fooking adopted muggle parents gave me.”

 

Wait… Oh no.

 

Lily got a horrible sinking feeling in her stomach that, a sense of unreality, that despite all logic pointing this being impossible, just as she had met Draco the Satanist goff she was about to meet Hermione Granger the Satanist goff… And she was somehow going to like it even less than meeting Draco the Satanist goff.

 

“My name’s B’loody Mary Smith,” She continued, the apostrophe in her name pronounced with pride as she leered at her now captive audience, “I was kidnapped when I was born. My real parents are vampires, and one of them is a witch, but Voldemort killed my mother and my father committed suicide because he was depressed about it.”

 

Color seemed to drain from the room itself and Lily still couldn’t help but notice how irked and unimpressed Wizard Lenin looked despite his growing leeriness and uncertainty, probably because her story was a less impressive version of the fake deaths of all his Albanian family members.

 

Everyone else looked as vaguely disoriented and disbelieving as Lily herself felt she must look right then (well, barring Rabbit, who seemed just as oddly at ease if ever, even if there was a strange gleam in his eyes as he stared at Hermione Granger, this new and degraded Hermione Granger).

 

In fact, everything about her was just less, her speech slurred, her words much less flashy then those Hermione proudly wielded, it was as if someone had turned Hermione Granger into a shell and stuffed the soul of Ebony Way inside. There was almost nothing left of her, of the Hermione Granger she had been, both before Quirrell and after.

 

It was almost as if Hermione had never existed in the first place.

 

“I still have nightmares about it,” Hermione turned B’loody Mary Queen of Goffs continued, “And I’m very haunted and depressed. It also turns out my real last name is Smith and not Granger, and since I’ve converted to Satanism, I’m in Slytherin now not Gryffindor.”

 

Lily pulled up the nearest chair, the one Luna had vacated earlier, and sat down, feeling the strangest urge to bash her head against a wall. And they sat there, in strained, awkward, and disbelieving silence as they all stared at Hermione.

 

Finally, Luna pointed out, “Um, Hermi… I mean, B’loody Mary, I’m afraid you’re in Default, not Slytherin… It’s a common mistake, after all, Salazar Slytherin did like Delilah Default best of all.”

 

Hermione turned B’loody only deigned to say shortly, “Defoolt is Slytheirn.”

 

(Well, considering that the majority of Default was composed of ex-Slytherins she might have actually had a point there.)

 

It was… No, it was what she had thought, this was a problem, it was growing, it just claimed another victim before she’d even thought to act. However, that didn’t change the fact that she was doing something about it now, while she still had time, no matter how close the victims seemed to be to her.

 

(First Death now Hermione, someone had a long and terrifying reach…)

 

Lily placed a hand tentatively on her forehead, gazing down at the floor, and said slowly, “So, my friends, as you can see, we clearly have a problem, and that it is spreading rapidly and with little sign of warning…”

 

She sighed, lifted her head, and stared forward, forcing herself to face the oncoming storm once again, “So, what are we going to do about it, any ideas?”

 

It appeared that no one, not even Vampire or B’loody, had any ideas. Lily offered them all a rather strained smile, as she walked to the chalk board once again, waiting for anyone at all to offer anything up. Even something ludicrous and disturbing like, “Kill everyone in Hogwarts and burn it to the ground,”

 

But there was nothing.

 

Rabbit offered a slow, crawling grin that was perfectly symmetrical on both sides of his face, and in it was nothing of happiness or rage or any emotion at all, only an empty smile that seemed to jeer at reality itself, and he said slowly, “Stare into the abyss, Lily, and watch for it to stare back.”

 

Hm, yes, well, if it was that or arson then Lily would probably take the arson.

 

Everyone turned to look at him, Lily included, feeling herself pale dramatically, and with a great shudder she asked, “Any other suggestions? Anyone?”

 

There appeared to be no other suggestions.

 

“Alright, follow up question, why is this happening? Who’s behind it?” Lily asked, and again no one answered, they all just kept staring at Harry and Hermione, sitting next to each other and whispering Satanist secrets in each other’s ears, “Well, who’s the usual suspects, we have the heir of Slytherin…”  

 

Lily stopped, paused, considered this and then spared a horrified glance at Wizard Lenin who was shaking his head with a truly irate grimace for her even questioning the possibility. But she had killed his giant snake, and he had no cards left, and he was lurking in the castle and if he wanted to steal the stone this would be a great time to…

 

Although Wizard Lenin, even in his most desperate of moments, probably wouldn’t have come up with this.

 

And even if he could he wouldn’t do it, ever, even if his alternative was being stuck in Squirrel’s head for eternity.

 

And that said more than enough about that.

 

“Ok, barring that, who else could be behind it?” Lily asked slowly, discarding rampaging Hindenburg as an explanation, although that probably meant he was still rampaging about the castle but Lily was willing to bet that he was as uncomfortable, if not more so, as she was about all of this.

 

“You,” Blaise said rather shortly.

 

“Besides me,” Lily snapped back, and then with an afterthought said, “And not the ministry farming nargles and wrackspurts either, Luna.”

 

Lily crossed her arms and closed her eyes, willing herself to think through the shock and growing fear tingling in her toes and find something to go on, some sort of a lead, “There’s some third option here that all of us are overlooking, something that’s not me and isn’t the heir of Slytherin, isn’t anything that any of us have considered but is right in front of our faces…”

 

Lily started at the feeling of a pair of hands holding hers and she looked over to find Harry smiling at her, his lips still black with lipstick and eyeliner still running down his face, and gripping her hands between his, “It’s alright, Ellie, it’s better not being a prep anyways.”

 

And it was so eerily familiar, that smile, those eyes… She found herself lost in a memory, years ago, of meeting Death for the first time and staring up at him in a train station called Purgatory and thinking…

 

She blinked, forcing herself back into the moment with a boy who couldn’t, who she refused, to allow to be Death, “Right, well, forgive me, Harry, if I’m a bit alarmed,” she then sighed, “Not to mention, you should probably be doing something about your habit of drinking blood, little brother, that’s not very hygienic.”

 

“I told you she was a prep, Vampire,” Hermione scoffed, “I don’t know why Ebony hangs out with loosers like them,”

 

“Right, if preps are people who don’t resort to cannibalism then I’m fine staying one.” Lily responded with a rather strained smile, which Hermione did not reciprocate in the slightest.

 

Even Harry grimaced slightly at that, “You don’t mean that,” and then with a larger frown, “Not like you have a choice anyways.”

 

And the room went perfectly still.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

He leaned forward, his eyes gleaming, and for a moment through the cheap crimson that seemed to cover them that endless green of Death’s eyes gleamed through, and he whispered in her ear, “ _This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.”_

 

END OF CHAPTER

 

(And in the distance, one could almost hear Ebony Way screaming “Crookshanks!” at the top of her lungs.)

 

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**AN: Remember to lev good reviouaghs!**


	7. Welcome to the Hotel California

**AN: Stoop it all u gay fags! If you do not lick my storie then fook off! P.S. It turns out B’loody Mary isn’t a muggle afert all and she and Vampire are evil, that’s why they’re moved houses, OK?**

**666**

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**666**

_In which Ebony’s gothic heavy metal band and all its members are revealed, Hindenburg appeared off-screen while Lily was busy worrying about goffisim, and Ebony reveals rather unfortunate news about Draco that Draco doesn’t take well at all._

* * *

 

 

Unfortunately, Ebony was back before they even had time to miss her or Lily even had time to truly think.

 

Perhaps it was unfair of Lily to feel that way, after all, for all she knew Ebony was the first and most blatant victim of goffisim. Most likely she had been like Draco or Hermione before all of this, a real person somewhere, with hopes and dreams and fears, now all wiped away leaving this strange unconvincing mannequin of a little girl behind. So perhaps it was unfair that Lily should look at her in anything other than pity, and even then, perhaps it was unfair that she moved beyond irritation into something colder.

 

But none the less, Ebony was the first glaring sign that something was wrong, and seemed to act as an event horizon, surrounding herself with other Satanist puppets seemingly without any true rhyme or reason.

 

And so, Lily couldn’t help but blame her a little, even if Rabbit himself was far more likely a cause than Ebony.

 

(Except, Rabbit had acted before and it was never like this, he removed things entirely, he didn’t leave these strange vaguely sentient shells behind… If Rabbit could be prescribed a personality she imagined he’d find such an action distasteful, messy, and perhaps even a bit rude to everyone involved.

 

No, Rabbit annihilated, when Rabbit devoured you there was not even a memory of what you once were.)

 

Either way, Ebony Way had returned from stomping around outside, holding hands with Draco and passionately kissing him inside of the Default common room (because apparently, Draco was a Default member too now, because that’s what happened these days) like nothing was wrong in the first place.

 

Maybe that was what was getting to Lily, the devouring of each other’s faces. Generally kissing in movies and television seemed much more aesthetic than this, shorter, sweeter, or if longer then with more passion and a bit less blatant sucking of tongues.

 

Well, except they stopped that, eventually, and for a moment Ebony had looked almost afraid. Almost as afraid as Lily herself was, still stuck on Harry’s words, Death’s words, except he couldn’t be Death…

 

(But how did she know? When had she last looked at him? When had she bothered to check in and drink tea and ask about the weather in a place that had none? There was a growing, overwhelming fear, that she would never see him again and that she had abandoned him to become this thing…)

 

And then they, the Satanists, Harry “Vampire” Potter, Hermione “B’loody Mary Queen of Goffs” Granger, Ebony Way, and Draco Malfoy decided it was time to start practicing for their heavy metal band. The heavy metal band that they’d apparently all been in forever despite the fact that Harry hadn’t even been here a whole day.

 

“Oh, Jesus Christ no,” Wizard Lenin said as they brought out the guitars, the bass, and the drums from seemingly nowhere at all, “You’re in a band now?”

 

“Ja,” Draco sniffed with a look of contempt at Wizard Lenin’s question, “Bloody Gothic Rose 666,”

 

Wizard Lenin put a hand through his hair, an action he’d done a lot in the past few days, and said, “Wasn’t the Satanism enough? Does there have to be a band?”

 

“I’m the lead singer,” Ebony piped in with a smirk, “and I play guitar.”

 

“Of course, you’re the lead singer,” Wizard Lenin said in a way that clearly meant this as an insult but wasn’t taken as insulting by any of the band members in question.

 

“People say that we sound like a cross between GC, Slip Knot, and MCR,” Ebony continued, because apparently Lily was supposed to know and love all of these bands, except Lily was just wondering why they couldn’t have managed to fit Led Zeppelin into that equation.

 

Or the Eagles, for that matter, Hotel California was sounding hauntingly relevant right about now.

 

(Her eyes met Harry’s, for only a moment, and as they looked at each other she thought she saw the shadow of Death lurking inside him, hidden somewhere in those fractured red irises…

 

“This is the way the world ends.”)

 

“Well, Daphne and I are out, we need to do… stuff…” Blaise said, completely unsurprisingly as he and Daphne had bailed on all of this so far at every given opportunity.

 

“Already? Aren’t going to stay for the show, Zabini?” Wizard Lenin asked in a tone that was probably meant to be drily irritated but was a bit too harsh for that.

 

Fortunately or unfortunately, Blaise Zabini and Daphne were not intimidated as Blaise said, “Yeah, but no, I have actual things to do with my time.”

 

And for all she knew she would never see them again, because it seemed every time she turned her back on someone, blinked…

 

Blaise and Daphne walked out the door, leaving the rest of them, and the band, behind.

 

“I hope they get eaten.” Wizard Lenin muttered under his breath, but really, that could possibly be the best thing to happen to them, if Lily’s gnawing suspicions were as accurate as she feared they were.

 

Lily stared ahead at the Satanist band and concurred, “It’s a quick death, at the very least, with some form of meaning inside of it.”

 

Whatever Wizard Lenin or Luna or hell even Rabbit thought of that statement was cut off by B’loody Mary.

 

“Where’s Diabolo and Haagrid?” Bloody Hermione asked, strangely enough seeming like regular impatient Hermione for a moment, as her eyes narrowed in irritation at the door, “They’re late again,”

 

“You mean Diablo and… Hagrid,” Wizard Lenin corrected almost with hesitation on the last part as if trying to parse whether they had truly meant Hagrid or not, only for all of them to stare at him in bafflement and irritation, apparently it really was Diabolo and Haagrid.

 

And Lily could all but picture a gun pointed at her head, cold metal in her hand as someone jeered across from her wearing a face that wasn’t human but wasn’t recognizable either, the room filled with the smoke of a thousand cigarettes, a red cloth tied around her head covered in her own sweat, the full moon watching them through its pale bright eye, and the cartridge spun with a single bullet inside and five blanks…

 

Round, round, round, and around it goes, where does it stop, nobody knows.

 

Who’s the lucky winner, just who would Diabolo and Haagrid turn out to be?

 

(Lily’s eyes darted to Wizard Lenin almost in panic, before relaxing, not him then… He was still here, so it couldn’t be him, and not Rabbit and not Luna… Lily could live without the others, if the world was an island she was trapped on, and only a few of her companions could survive, then she could live without the others.)

 

The door opened as if on cue and in stepped a gangly adolescent boy, with hair almost as black as Vampire Potter’s but for the bright blue streaks dyed into it, this time wearing the face of Ron Weasley.

 

Lily blinked, wishing she could be surprised but… If anyone were to succumb to the parasite that was goffism first it really should have been Ron Weasley. After all, he was barely a sentient person in the first place, if at all, what with his irrational hatred of snakes.

 

This was much less upsetting than Hermione or even Harry’s sudden appearance…

 

(She supposed she could expect Ginny next. Although it was hard to imagine Ginny becoming more alarming than she already was.)

 

Except, behind Ron el Diabolo, was one that was about ten times more baffling if just as underwhelming.

 

“Is that Hagrid?” Lily blurted, apparently saying what everyone else was thinking too, because Wizard Lenin was practically falling out of his seat along with Luna as they stared at the half giant as he made his way into their common room like he belonged their or something.

 

Lily really hoped he didn’t belong there, she could handle Draco joining, maybe, but Hagrid was just an all-time low.

 

“Oh, it’s groundskeeper Hagrid… Hello Mister Hagrid… How are you?” Luna, bless her heart, was trying so very hard, but even she was failing in the face of Hagrid in the heavy metal gothic death band.

 

Hagrid, a member of Ebony’s heavy metal gothic death band, yes, that thought did need to be repeated multiple times in her head.

 

Hagrid offered them a stiff solemn nod as he made his way into the room and over to his goffick cohorts where they all began to bicker with themselves about what to do that day, which unfortunately Lily didn’t have the energy or desire to listen to.

 

She just watched their faces instead, Harry’s, his eyes darting to her then to Ebony then back again, looking strangely tired and worn, and far older than they had earlier in the day even. He looked… tired.

 

Ebony didn’t even seem to notice, seemed to willfully not notice even.

 

And Draco, well, his eyes wandered over to Harry quite often as well as back to Ebony, clearly remembering the argument he’d had morning (which Lily had almost completely forgotten because there’d been way more important shit to worry about than the alarming fact that apparently Draco had fucked her little brother) and the love triangle he had formed between the three of them.

 

Finally, Harry commented with a rather terse smile, “I’m feeling depressed right now, Ebony, so I don’t think I’ll play.”

 

And Harry set down his bass, offered a smaller, softer, and infinitely sadder smile to Lily, and then quietly walked out the door.

 

“I’m feeling depressed too,” Draco said almost hastily, his eyes darting to Ebony and then to the door, and he started walking before she had a chance to say anything otherwise, “I need to think about stuff.”

 

And then Draco too was gone.

 

For a moment, Ebony just stared after them, and surprisingly the anger of earlier was completely gone and instead that anxious fear remained, “Fine, we’ll just write songs today, since they’re feeling deperssed.”

 

Lily simply stared at the door, as if her eyes could see through it entirely and find where Harry (Death) had gone.

 

“Will they be alright?” Luna asked Ebony.

 

“Draco’s probably slitting his wrists,” Ebony remarked almost casually, as if she was talking about the weather, and then noticing Lily’s head whipping around and the rapt attention of Luna, Lily, and Wizard Lenin she explained, “He wouldn’t die because he was a vampire too and the only way you can kill a vampire is with a c-r-o-s-s (there’s no way I’m saying that) or a steak and Vampire was probably watching a depressing movie like The Corpse Bride.”

 

And somehow it was Lily who had to casually remark back, “Draco wasn’t a vampire yesterday.”

 

But none of them seemed interested in that fact or Draco’s impending death. But then, why should they, Draco had been dead for days now. Perhaps this was his only way out, the only way left to him, and as much as she disliked Draco (both the new and the original), who was Lily to deny him his one exit?

 

Ebony, instead, took this moment to change into another outfit right in front of everyone. This time it was a black leather shirt that once again was designed in such a way to highlight the cleavage that had yet to grow in and a ridiculously small mini-skirt that had the words “Simple Plan” written in garish writing on her ass.

 

“Nice outfit,” Wizard Lenin blandly commented.

 

“You might think I’m a slut,” Ebony retorted, “But I’m really not.”

 

Wizard Lenin, it was to be noted, was not convinced.

 

Lily for her own part had hoped words like slut didn’t apply to twelve year olds, Ebony was proving her wrong every single day.

 

Of course, all thoughts of this were removed again when Ebony and pals decided that they weren’t actually going to write songs, but instead play what was an old favorite for the group.

 

_“Long ago, just like the hearse, you died to get in again. We are so far from you_ ,” Ebony sang, and certainly, it was one of the better songs Lily had heard in Ebony’s Hogwarts tenure thus far.

 

_“Burning on, just like a match you strike to incinerate the lives of everyone you know,”_

 

Yes, strangely apt yet again, everyone’s lives were incinerating, being torn to pieces and warped into something that barely seemed a life at all, that wasn’t even decent enough to offer the likes of Harry and Draco the illusion of happiness…

 

It was, it was a play, a transient stage and an absurd play whose plot was non-existent and whose acts were infinite, it was a play without roles or directions or dialogue of note.

 

It was absurdism.

 

Ebony suddenly burst into tears, stopping in the middle of the song, great thick tears rolling down her cheeks.

 

“Ebony, are you ok?” Hermione asked, leaning forward with a look of honest unhindered concern that Lily hadn’t seen since their first year, before Quirrell.

 

“What the fuck do you think?” Ebony snapped back at Hermione, the girl shrinking back from her, “Well Voldemort came and the fucking bastard told me to fucking kill Harry, but I don’t want to kill him, cuz he’s really nice. Even if he did go out with Draco. But if I don’t kill Harry then Voldemort will fucking kill Draco!”

 

Lily stood without even realizing it, still so off balance, still so out of sync except now wasn’t the time for that. If Hindenburg was here, even if he was talking to Ebony (why make Ebony an assassin of all people, why a little girl to do his work for him, and why not Lily on the death list too while he was at it, why this game, what was he taking advantage of), then she had to act, she had to act now before it was too late…

 

Before she could even think to walk to the door though Draco jumped out from the bathroom, red and wild eyed, staring at Ebony in complete and utter betrayal, “Why didn’t you fucking tell me?!”

 

He stepped into the room, towards Ebony, hands shaking with suppressed rage, “You, you, you… Fucking poser muggle bitch!”

 

Tears streamed down his face, and for a moment he cast his eyes around the room almost desperately, then he ran out of the Default common room, still sobbing even as Ebony herself sobbed.

 

And they all just stood there, watching, and…

 

And Wizard Lenin started to laugh.

 

Lily, Luna, and Rabbit glanced at him as he wordlessly fell into hysterics, his laughter harmonizing with Ebony’s desperate sobs. Finally, when he seemed to have had enough, Lily practically spat out, “Well, Lenin, are you feeling better?”

 

“Strangely, yes, I think that made my day.” Wizard Lenin said, wiping at the corner of his eye, “Perhaps even my week.”

 

Lily wordlessly glanced at all of them, Hermione, Hagrid, Ron, and Ebony...

 

(All the world’s a stage…)

 

“Luna?”

 

Luna looked up, “Yes, captain?”

 

“Would you mind watching Rabbit for a while, I’m afraid there’s something I need to do.”

 

Luna nodded quickly, grabbing Rabbit’s hand as he stared into space tightly, “Of course, captain,”

 

Lily nodded back and let her eyes drift to Wizard Lenin, “Lenin, I need to find Harry and then… Then I need to find my uncle,”

 

The smile dripped from his face as he understood completely what she meant by that, he didn’t offer any opposing arguments though, which was good, because they didn’t have time for that sort of thing anymore.

 

Then, “So, if you could stall your other half for me, or even take care of him, it would be much appreciated.”

 

And without a word Lily left the room and its occupants behind searching out Death and his kingdom.

 

END OF CHAPTER

 

(An hour later, Albus Dumbledore would walk into Default’s common room, his eyes ringed red and not a spark of geniality inside of them, “What have you done? Ebony, Draco has been found in his room. He committed suicide by slitting his wrists.”)

 

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**AN: See, that’s basically not swering this time and Dumbledore was really angry and din’t even have headache.**


	8. Tears in the Rain or Loopin Masticates

**AN: I said stop flaming, you preps! See if this chapter is shroopid111 It dells with really serious issues sp see for yourself if it is zstoopid brw thanks to my friend Raven (and The Carnivorous Muffin) for helping me**

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**666**

_In which Lily spontaneously ages and accidentally murders two professors in perhaps her most gruesome killing to date, Hagrid confesses his love, and Hogwarts is filled to the brim with pedophiles._

* * *

 

Outside the castle, it was still bitterly cold, the sky continually overcast, the hail, sleet, and snow still pounding into the ground, and the wind howling as Lily pressed onwards, not quite sure where she was headed.

 

Heading to the lake somehow seemed like the right direction, or at least, it was a direction. A direction that wasn’t in a room with Ebony Way and her fellow Satanists, or what remained of her fellow Satanists now that both Draco and Harry had already left. So, while Lily had no idea where Harry, or even Death, would choose to visit at Hogwarts it felt like the right way to go.

 

And perhaps her luck held out, because there he was, sitting at the edge of the lake and staring out into the horizon, the dark makeup almost gone from his face, washed away by the rain, leaving him with a haunting reminiscence of Death that Lily didn’t dare deny.

 

The words were almost instinctive, without thought, as she walked up behind him and sat next to him, staring ahead with him into the afternoon sunlight, “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain…”

 

Lily trailed off, the Batty’s final words in a ruined city to the haggard detective who had killed all his friends, lingering unspoken on her tongue.

 

But he offered her such a familiar, nostalgic and bitterly painful, smile, and looking more like Roy Batty in the dark with the rain pounding against his skin than he had any right to, he finished the line for her, “Time to die.”

 

The wind howled, screamed, while Lily herself was deathly silent as she felt her skin grown numb.

 

Finally, “You could have always taken the train,”

 

Harry, Death, didn’t respond for a moment, merely kept staring out at the lake, and finally he said, “I’m sorry, I’m feeling a little dispersed,”

 

Dispersed or depressed, the first was poetic and rather fitting of death, the second was far too blunt however true it could be, there had always been something overshadowing whatever brief moments of happiness Lily had ever seen in him.

 

But dispersed… Yes, he was scattered, diluted, spread thin like butter over too much bread so that there was only a thin resemblance to him.

 

“So am I, I think…” She paused then, and said, “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, Harry, but I really hope that you’re not Death and that we’ve never met before.”

 

He considered her for a moment, then shrugged, and said, “It’s hard, I know, I did like Brittany once, I wasn’t always a Satinist, but I changed too…” Harry trailed off, wiped at his forehead and the thick clumping white foundation that was there, removing it to reveal a pentagram etched into his forehead.

 

There were many things she could ask, she could ask why he didn’t tell her, or if he’d ever known her, if he was her brother or her uncle or just what he was supposed to be. But all that felt too concrete, too real, and instead in this strange surreal world of constant snow and rain she asked, “Why did you change, Harry?”

 

“Didn’t have a choice,” he repeated with a too casual shrug, “Didn’t want to be a looser prep, couldn’t be if I tried.”

 

She swallowed, her tongue feeling thicker than usual, and the next question was breathy and almost afraid, “And did you mean it, when you said that this was how the world ended, that this is everything breaking apart?”

 

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Harry said with a shrug, suddenly standing and staring back at the castle, “But either you’re a Satanist, or you’re a prep, and anyone delooding themselves into thinking anything else is just a stupid fucking prep. And that’s all there is too it.”

 

He then offered her a thin smile, one shallow and devoid of any true sympathy, and said as if he didn’t know her at all, “I better practice with da band now. Ebony, Draco, and B’loody Mary are probably waiting for me.”

 

And then she just sat there, watching him walk away and head back into the castle, feeling more isolated than she ever had in her life.

 

(And it was still so terribly cold outside.)

 

Looking up at the sky, at the thick drops still pounding down from overhead, Lily wondered at her own resemblance to Batty, and the feeling that this was perhaps the closest she could come to accepting her own death.

 

“I suppose there’s no point delaying, is there?”

 

Taking a cue from Ebony and Draco Lily summoned herself a knife cut both her wrists and sinking them into the lake, watching as the blood rose upwards like blooming spider lilies, and the world beyond grew dark and heavy and…

 

And then it was as if she hit a wall, there was nothing, a great solid blackness that prevented her from going anywhere, leaving her no choice but to fall backwards and…

 

Lily opened her eyes, felt the room spin as she tried to write herself, having somehow wound up curled naked on the floor of the girl’s dungeon bathroom. She grabbed onto a nearby sink, unsteadily hoisting herself upwards on shaking limbs, watching as the world seemed to tilt in on itself.

 

Her knife was still on the floor, still covered in blood despite the rain (except she was inside, she had been outside before, but now she was inside and had she teleported in her death throes?) and hesitantly, with shaking fingers, Lily picked it up and placed it on the corner of the sink.

 

Then she caught the eyes of her reflection, and felt the vertigo only deepen as she found herself staring at an older Lily, the Lily she one day would be but wasn’t yet, an older red headed girl with fine shaped pale features and almost glowing green eyes who was probably somewhere between sixteen and eighteen, but certainly past her first throes of adolescence.

 

Lily touched her face, watching as the girl in the mirror did the same with wide and almost horrified eyes, and it was Lily’s distorted older, slightly deeper, voice that asked, “What… What happened?”

 

Unfamiliar laughter sounded.

 

She turned from the mirror then and found herself staring at the doorway where she found herself staring at Snape and some man she didn’t know. Snape seemed somehow greasier than usual, a garish lecherous and altogether sinister and predatory smile on his face as he pointed a handheld video camera towards her, and the other man. dressed in a ragged worn suit that had seen far better days, featuring unkempt hair, had a look of utter ecstasy on his face and a hand stuffed into the front of his pants, moving back and forth over his crotch.

 

(She wanted to close her eyes right then, feeling strangely nauseus as everything seemed to collapse all at once, and she didn’t understand anything that was happening and…)

 

The unfamiliar man moaned.

 

Truth be told Lily wasn’t even aware of taking up the knife, running towards them screaming, because by that point their laughter and moaning had already stopped, their faces twitching and their heads exploding as some internal pressure at Lily’s command forced them out, so that their brains decorated the bathroom and only their headless corpses remained for Lily to stab at.

 

And of course, it was around then, sitting naked on top of Snape’s headless corpse, covered in blood, bone, and gray matter, the room smelling distinctly of blood and bile and death, that Lily came back to herself and realized a couple things.

 

First, she’d spontaneously aged, somehow.

 

Second, Snape and some other man had filmed her resurrection for a porno.

 

Third, she’d responded to all of this by murdering Snape and homeless professor in a great homage to Total Recall by blowing off their motherfucking heads.

 

Fourth, if she’d been nearly thrown out of Hogwarts for stabbing Quirrell through the heart in self-defense then she had a feeling that the consequences of decorating the dungeons bathrooms in Snape’s brains would be far worse.

 

Fifth, she’d never have to attend Potions again, or listen to Snape’s voice, or even see Snape’s face again.

 

And sixth, something had gone terribly wrong and either Lily was still dead but in some strange parallel hell dimension or she hadn’t truly died. And given that this seemed more or less like the kind of thing Lily usually went through (with a bit more death and naked spontaneous aging than usual), Lily was leaning towards it being the same messed up dimension she’d always been a part of.

 

Still, Lily stared down at her handiwork, then around at the bathroom, and then back down at her handiwork, “Hm, in retrospect, there were probably cleaner ways to do this…”

 

And less lethal ways, except, well… Really, if Snape was going around videotaping Lily in the bathroom naked then she had no sympathy for him, or his creepy moaning homeless friends.

 

Still…

 

What was she supposed to do with them?

 

She couldn’t leave them here, could she? But if she wheelbarrowed them out where the hell was she supposed to dump the bodies or burn them for that matter.

 

Lily stared about the room, searching for a sign of divine inspiration, when suddenly she remembered the inspiration that always came with room, namely, the chamber of secrets and the heir of Slytherin.

 

With concentration Lily rearranged the splatters of blood and brains to form themselves into ominous dripping words in that familiar haunting writing, “One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish… Uh… Here are two, who now sleep with fish.”

 

It rhymed, at the very least, and Dr. Seuss had infinitely more rhythm and rhyme than Wizard Lenin’s counterpart so… Well, it was probably good enough.

 

With that, Lily summoned herself a familiar brightly colored sweater and pair of jean shorts (first too small for her body, automatically having gotten herself her twelve year old self, and then a bit too large as she overestimated the size of her torso and hips), and then unsteadily, on bare feet, made her way back up seven flights of stair cases the Default common room.

 

“This has to be,” Lily said to herself in her strange new voice, “The least productive, most violent, and most terrifying day I’ve ever lived through.”

 

Unfortunately, as Lily opened the door to the Default common room, it wasn’t over by a long shot.

 

Ebony stood in the doorway of the bathroom, only, she was oddly older too, where before she’d only looked like she’d wanted to have cleavage now she did, and a pair of hips to match, more she was covered only by a towel with a truly horrifying man’s face on it, those thick red almost black tears running down her face, shrieking at the top of her lungs.

 

And beyond her, hovering outside an open window on a pair of broom sticks, was Snape and the same man she’d seen before, Snape holding that same video camera with the same lecherous smirk, and the man with that same hand down his pants.

 

(And Lily was starting to wonder if the past ten minutes even happened. Had it been some sort of a hallucination? If she went back downstairs now would she still find their headless corpses and the shattered video camera? Or would she find a clean and empty room without a hint that anyone had even been inside of it.)

 

“Ew, you fucking pervs! Stop looking at me naked, are you pedos or what?!” Ebony screamed as she clutched the towel closer to her body.

 

Before anyone could make any move Harry ran in with a determined look on his face, pointing his want (which looked oddly like Lily’s wand that she had loaned to Wizard Lenin), at Snape and the stranger, “Abra kedavra!”

 

Then even as the pair screamed in agony Ebony held up a gun (leaving Lily to wonder where the hell she had managed to get a muggle gun and how Lily hadn’t even noticed it before that point) and shot at Snape and Lupin dozens of time (far more than should have been possible with only six chambers).

 

The camera fell to the floor of the bathroom, the lens cracking once again, and Snape and the other man fell in with it, now bleeding profusely and still screaming that blood curdling scream (the screams that Lily hadn’t heard in her own ruthless elimination of them).

 

Lily started as behind her Dumbledore charged into the room, brushing past her and straight towards Ebony as if Lily wasn’t even there at all (despite the fact that, now looking down at her hands, Lily was still covered in the blood that shouldn’t even exist), “Ebony, it has been revealed that someone has… Noooooooooo!”

 

Dumbledore caught eye of Snape and the other man, clearly on the verge of death now, and Dumbledore brought out his wand, syllables of a spell on his tongue when suddenly…

 

Suddenly, the world shifted, and they were all standing outside, all of them (Harry, B’loody, Wizard Lenin, Luna, Lily, Ron el Diablo, Hagrid, Snape, Lupin, Dumbledore…) and again, everyone seemed aged, all of them having jumped five or six years in their own lifespan to the edge of adulthood in the blink of an eye, and Lily just stared at all of them and how none of them seemed to notice at all.

 

Then Hagrid exclaimed to everyone, a broom stick in one hand, “Everyone, we need to talk.”

 

Lily looked at the strange and Snape, still bleeding out, somehow still alive despite losing both of their heads and a tremendous amount of blood, then back at Hagrid, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

 

But no one seemed to care what Lily thought, because they were all too busy watching as Snape sneered, spitting out blood, and asked in a rasping voice, “What do you know, Haagrid? You’re just a little Hogwarts student!”

 

Lily was so confused that somehow she couldn’t even keep the words bottled in, “No he’s not, he hasn’t been a student in fifty years!”

 

“I may be a Hogwarts student,” Hagrid said, leaving a giant pause for dramatic effect as he added, “But I’m also a Satanist!”

 

Lily’s eyes caught Wizard Lenin’s, and it was so strange, because looking at an aged Lenin Rabbitson was bizarre, he looked like Wizard Lenin yet he also didn’t, and instead Lily was looking at a stranger who was offering her a look of sympathetic understanding and vague amusement.

 

Lily felt herself unintentionally offering an uncertain smile back at him.

 

“This cannot be!” Snape cried, crawling on the ground towards Hagrid, blood soaking through his robes and running down his arms and fingers to form small streams that ran through the grass, “There must be other factors!”

 

“You don’t have any!” Ebony accused, still in her towel, the water logged black cotton now clinging to her frame.

 

Lily, glancing at Wizard Lenin again, at those familiar, relievingly familiar, pale blue eyes, found herself trying to fight down chuckles. Because all of it, suddenly, was just so absurdly funny.

 

The strange man in the worn suit, brushing clumps of hair out of his eyes, struggling to his feet even as he coughed blood into his hand and held onto his bleeding stomach, held up the handheld camera in one hand with a look of triumph, “The lens may be ruined, but the tape is still in there!”

 

Then the look of triumph disappeared as if it had never been there, and a frustrated anger took its place. He rubbed the hand that he’d stuck down his pants (multiple times that day), onto his own pants and asked, “Why are you doing this?”

 

Lily’s laughter was uncontrollable, it bubbled up from inside of her and poured over as she watched this grimy homeless man who had clearly seen better days, blubber on in complete and utter derailed nonsense.

 

On the other side of their huddle, Lily could see Wizard Lenin was doing the same, only he was holding up a hand in anticipation, silently telling her to wait for the punch line, as Hagrid stepped forward and answered the man’s unprompted question, “Because… Because…”

 

Hagrid paused, waving a wand in the air (a wand Lily could have sworn he didn’t have since that whole expulsion for giant spiders thing ages ago), and he began singing a rather strange song with a discordant melody (that sounded as if it was never meant to have that melody), “ _Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, shawty. It’s your birthday. We gon’ party like it’s yo birthday. We gon’ sip Bacardi like it’s your birthday. And you know we don’t give a fuck it’s not your birthday!_ ”

 

“Because your gothic?” Snape asked fearfully, interrupting Hagrid’s spontaneous singing about birthdays.

 

But Hagrid’s response was somehow better than even his singing, the culminating point of Lily’s day, which brought it all together in such a way that, while it wasn’t alright, it would never be alright, perhaps it could be something she could live with, or at least laugh at.

 

“Because I love her!”

 

And Lily, along with Wizard Lenin, collapsed on the ground, laughing hysterically.

 

END OF CHAPTER

 

(Once the laughter had died down, and Lily looked up to see that all the Satanists, as well as Dumbledore, Snape, Hagrid, and Homeless Magoo had all disappeared from whence they came.

 

Lily looked over at Wizard Lenin, Luna, and Rabbit, and wiping tears from her eyes said, “So, I aged spontaneously and blew up the heads of Snape and some homeless guy and blamed it on the heir of Slytherin… What happened to you guys?”

 

Wizard Lenin and Luna exchanged a glance and then looked back at Lily, finally Wizard Lenin said, “Well, Draco apparently just couldn’t take it anymore and killed himself.”

 

“Oh…” Lily said, and somehow this didn’t seem nearly as sobering as it should have, “Good for him.”)

 

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**AN: Sirius ishoos are Sirius things, now, do you think that was shtooopid?!**


	9. Voldemort has Draco Bondage

**AN: Stop f,aming, OK? Haagrid is a pedo to a lot of people in American schools r lick that. I wanted to a dress the issue. How do you know Snap isn’t Christian plus Haagrid isn’t really in love with Ebony, that was Cedric, OK? And Lilee is just cazy, yo, and The Carnivorous Muffin’s proooblum.**

**666**

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**666**

_In which it is revealed that Draco is not dead, just kidnapped, Snape and Homeless Magoo are both inconceivably still alive, if slated to fly over the cuckoo’s nest, and Vampire has a vision._

* * *

 

 

Lily and Wizard Lenin sat together in the darkened Default common room, both far older than they should be, Lenin Rabbitson’s face resembling Wizard Lenin’s more closely in the dark than the twelve-year-old version ever had.

 

In one of the chairs beside them, the older Luna (who still had an elfin almost childlike cast to her features) was curled up against the aged Rabbit (who had retained and refined his symmetry into something almost lethally beautiful and more inhuman for it), sleeping as Rabbit stared off silently into the patterns of light and shadow that the fire made as it danced. 

 

Harry… He lay sleeping beneath dozens of covers in a bed that Lily assumed must belong to him (since it hadn’t been there before all of this), the eyeliner back on his face once again, the scar on his forehead hidden from sight, and the fire somehow making his face seem softer than it truly was.

 

As for the rest of them, well, Lily could care less where they were. (Although Zabini and Greengrass really were taking their sweet time getting back from avoiding Ebony and the gang, Lily almost envied them.)

 

But Lily found herself still staring at Lenin Rabbitson, at his white curling hair, at the shadows of his cheekbones, and the pale burning eyes that stared straight back at her.

 

“It’s strange, Lily, but I don’t remember being twelve,” Wizard Lenin said before amending, “Not the first time, that’s all perfectly clear, but as Lenin Rabbitson the memories are…”

 

Lily cut in as he trailed off, “You believe me though,”

 

A grim frown and that piercing gaze, “Yes, Lily, I believe you.”

 

Lily just nodded back, relief pooling and loosening in her stomach, even though a strange overwhelming shadow still loomed over her.

 

“What happened, when you left?”

 

Lily paused, allowing the memories to play themselves repeatedly, Death in the rain, goffisim washing away from his face and leaving something so achingly and tenderly familiar behind, her blood blooming like tiger lilies in the water, the great overwhelming dark, and then the dungeon bathroom, the murder, and reality tripping over itself and stuttering, bringing people here and there and linearity entirely lost.

 

“I am trapped,” Lily said the realization sinking slowly, creeping in now that she could look back and think what had truly happened, what it all meant, “Harry… He’s Death, I don’t know how, but he is, or rather was… And reality is falling apart. I don’t know how much longer it has before nothing remains but a cheap imitation.”

 

Wizard Lenin, for the first time, didn’t contradict her.

 

He didn’t say anything for far too long.

 

Then, somehow calmly, with a clear headedness that was completely uncalled for in this kind of a situation, he said quietly, “I think it would be best, Lily, if you did not attempt to… leave again. It seems to move faster when you’re gone.”

 

Lily started, completing the thought he wasn’t saying for him, “…You don’t think…”

 

“That it will happen to all of us?” Wizard Lenin asked, “I hope not, but I have never seen anything like this before, and you are right when you said the signs are beginning to become overwhelming. I’ve always believed in a rational world, even a world with magic but I am also not a fool, and I won’t deny a situation that clearly is undeniable. Still, I doubt it will happen to you though, whatever this is, and if it comes to it, then I will give up my mortal body and rejoin your spirit rather than be reduced to a puppet.”

 

In other words, he would rather die than become like Death or Draco. He, like Draco, would take the final exit before oblivion.

 

(But it couldn’t possibly come to that, she wouldn’t let it.)

 

And Lily asked then, “How do we stop this?”

 

Wizard Lenin offered her a bleak and humorless smile, “I’m afraid, Lily, that this is out of my jurisdiction. You see, I only had to deal with civil wars, the end of the world is a little beyond my abilities.”

 

“If someone is behind this, then I swear, I will stop them,” Lily insisted, feeling a burning and almost bitter determination beginning to spread through, “This world may already be infected with an illusion, but at least it’s one I can tolerate, this new one is just insulting to all of us.”

 

If they could warp reality to their pleasing, if they could steal Lily’s own powers from her, then Lily herself could warp it back into what it was or at least something resembling what it used to be rather than this farce.

 

Rabbit turned his head, dark eyes meeting hers, and asked in a voice that was still androgynous and clear despite his new age, “How does one illusion differ from another, Lily, when neither of them were real to begin with?” 

 

The door slammed open, Luna startled awake and clutched tighter at Rabbit’s robes (who still held her loosely and with a hint of that polite, empty, smile on his face), from his bed Harry blinked into awareness, staring at the door with burning green eyes that he just as soon covered with crimson contact lenses, and they all watched as Ebony marched in.

 

She gave each of them a tormented look, her eyes turning from Luna, to Rabbit, to Lenin Rabbitson, to Lily, and then even to Harry. In her hand, she was clutching the knife that Lily had earlier conjured to kill Snape and the stranger he’d brought with him, a man by the name of Lupin according to Wizard Lenin. (Lupin who had been best friends with her father, who she’d never even seen or bothered to hear about until now… She wondered what he would have been like before all of this, now she supposed it was too late.)

 

Ebony’s eyes fell on the knife, and she said softly, “Draco gave me this in case anything happened to him.”

 

She offered them a weak smile, her hand shaking as she brought the knife to one of her pale wrists, “He told me to use it valiantly against an enemy. But I knew we must both be together.”

 

With wide eyes Lily realized what she was about to do, Luna was scrambling off Rabbit and moving towards her, wand extended and shouting the words to knock the knife out of her hand before she could cut too deep (drops of blood already welling at the surface of her skin), but then Harry threw his head back and screamed, “No!”

 

He was clutching his head, throwing himself backwards and contorting himself into a bridge, his eyes rolled back into his head, and he screamed even as he tore at his own hair, “OMFG, noo, my scar hurts!”

 

The knife clattered to the floor and Luna vanished it with a flick of her wand and a great sigh of relief even as they all watched as Ebony moved towards Harry.

 

And once again there was that jarring sensation, of something being skipped over, and Harry was suddenly not screaming or contorted, but sitting up covered in sweat, staring exhaustedly at Ebony with those false red eyes, a lightning bolt on his forehead where the pentagram had earlier been.

 

(Death’s scar… Her own scar… Death, perhaps, bleeding through Harry Vampire Potter.)

 

Again, there was a sense of non-linearity, of essential pieces missing, as Ebony asked a question that had never been prompted, “How did you know?”

 

Harry’s hands shook as he massaged his temples and said weakly, “I saw it, and my scar turned back into the lightning bolt.”

 

Although what Harry saw, what this cheap paper version of Death (who had kept so many and so few of his original characteristics), was left to the imagination. Lily found herself standing, walking closer to the pair of them, searching for something in either of them, some hint besides a scar on a forehead that he was not truly gone (that she would not have to scream in overwhelming grief and rage when the emotional train hit her).

 

“I thought you didn’t have a scar anymore!” Ebony shouted, pale fingers tracing the lightning bolt on his forehead.

 

He winced at the sound of her voice and explained, still exhausted and rubbing at his forehead, “I do, but, but, Diabolo changed it into a pentagram for me and I always cover it up with foundation.”

 

He closed his eyes, breathed in, and continued, “Anyway, my scar hurt and I turned it back into the lightning bolt, save me, then I had a vision of what was happening to Draco.”

 

Lily blinked, hesitated, the words were directed at Ebony, entirely at Ebony but…

 

Save me.

 

There was a lightning bolt on his head, he said he changed it back, save me, he changed it back from a pentagram and... Save me.

 

Harry continued, grabbed at Ebony’s hand, and insisted fearfully with wild eyes, “Volvemort has Draco bondage!”  

 

Wizard Lenin literally fell out of the chair he had been sitting in. On the floor, he looked up at Harry, shivering there in his bed and clutching at Ebony, and said, “You must be fucking with me.”

 

Harry blinked, his eyebrows lowered, and for a moment she could so easily picture Death instead, wearing his familiar foreign dark clothing, rather than the lack of clothes that Harry seemed to prefer to sleep with, “Didn’t you hear what I said? Draco is…”

 

“Harry Potter, if you value your life and your sanity, you will not finish that sentence.” Wizard Lenin picked himself up took in a deep breath through gritted teeth and forced himself to let it out, “And for the sake of my own sanity I’m going to assume you mean that Voldemort has kidnapped Draco Malfoy’s corpse. In which case… Why do any of us care?”

 

Harry was practically spitting as he tore off the covers and walked over to Wizard Lenin in nothing but his boxers, and insisted, “Draco’s not dead, he’s bondage!”

 

For a moment Wizard Lenin said nothing, dully eyeing Death’s adolescent almost naked form, and then said, “… You know, I don’t wonder if Draco Malfoy wouldn’t prefer to be dead rather than what you’re suggesting.”

 

Before Wizard Lenin and Harry cold come to blows, Ebony’s eyes rolled back and she fell onto the floor into a faint, her wrist bleeding quite profusely. Lily nudged her with a foot, only for Ebony to twitch slightly, “It seems that she cut herself deeper than any of us thought… We should probably take her to the hospital wing before she dies.”

 

Wizard Lenin stared down at her in aggravation, “But how will she ever learn the importance of not slitting one’s wrists if she never faces the consequences?”

 

“… Lenin, I’m pretty sure the consequences are death.”

 

Wizard Lenin blinked almost innocently, and asked, “Your point being?”

 

(He really was terrible at pretending to be a sympathetic normal human being.)

 

Lily and Luna picked up Ebony in tandem, each supporting her beneath a different arm, and with Wizard Lenin, Rabbit, and Harry they all made a grand march from the Default common room in the middle of the night to the hospital wing.

 

And of all of them, Wizard Lenin was probably the most put out by all of this.

 

“You know, I was taking this all quite seriously up until you said that Voldemort, and I quote, has Draco bondage.”

 

“It’s a very serious ishoo,” Harry spat back at him, “He could die!”

 

“He did die!” Wizard Lenin retorted with equal venom if not five times the irritation, “If you’ll be so good to remember he slit his own bloody wrists just like Enoby here has at least five times! It seems like all the rage these days and is really detracting from my capacity to care. One of these days I’m not even going to blink when someone mentions slitting their wrists!”

 

“You ludicrous fool, I said he’s bondage, not dead!”

 

“And I hope you realize that bondage is not a verb.”

 

“Save me,” Lily repeated softly, both stopped bickering to blink at her as Lily stared back over their shoulder as they descended the stairs, “When you were talking to Ebony, you said, ‘save me.”

 

He blinked, offered her an awkward smile, “That was the vision, we need to save Draco…”

 

No, that hadn’t been it. It had slipped in, somewhere amongst the slurred words that had burned so clearly for two syllables, out of place and context, “Save me.”

 

(There was a growing fear inside her, a bottomless pit of terror, that she had no idea how to do that, or that it was already somehow too late.)

 

They arrived at the hospital wing, Lily and Luna discarding Ebony onto a bed, who after having a blood replenishing potion shoved in her face, was now starting to come to. Next to her, in three other beds, were none other than Snape, Hagrid, and Lupin. Snape and Lupin now with healing gunshot wounds after having been shot dozens of times by Ebony and having been cursed by Harry.

 

None of the three men seemed to be conscious.

 

“It’s Snap, Haagrid, and Loopin!” Ebony exclaimed as she looked at Madam Pomfrey for explanation.

 

Madam Pomfrey nodded and explained, “They’re going to Saint Mungo’s after they recover because they were pedophiles and you can’t have those fucking pervs teaching in a school with lots of hot girls.”

 

Which… Lily wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

 

She supposed it was enough that, even though the universe was falling to pieces, at least she’d never have to go to Potions again.

 

Ebony leered at the three of them and promptly flipped her middle finger up at all their unconscious forms.

 

Hagrid though, blinked into awareness, and spying all of them, he slowly shuffled his way over with his great lumbering body. And in his hands a bouquet of pink roses appeared which he promptly offered to Ebony…

 

Because of course, Lily had to go and forget that he’d confessed his love for Ebony during the whole debacle earlier.

 

Lily felt herself pale and become a bit queasy. Judging by Luna and Wizard Lenin’s expressions, they weren’t faring much better either.

 

“Enoby, I need to tell you something,” Hagrid said somberly as he held out the flowers to her, which if Lily remembered was the exact same thing he’d said last time.

 

“This seems regrettably familiar,” Wizard Lenin commented under his breath as the scene unfolded.

 

Ebony knocked the flowers back into Hagrid’s chest with reckless abandon.

 

“Fuck off!” Ebony responded, “You know I fucking hate the color pink anyway! And I don’t like fucked up preps like you!”

 

“No,” Hagrid said in dismay as he pushed the flowers back to her, “These are not roses!”

 

“Ceci n’est pas une pipe?” Lily questioned, which was a bit deep for Hagrid, particularly this altered goff version of Hagrid, but an answer she could at least respect.

 

“What, are they goffs too, you proser pep?” Ebony asked spitefully.

 

“I saved your life!” Hagrid cried pointing at her, looking genuinely dismayed by Ebony’s rejection of his love. Which, normally Lily really didn’t approve of Ebony’s decisions, but this time Lily was fully behind her cut throat rejection of Hagrid.

 

“No, you didn’t,” Ebony swiftly replied, “You saved me from getting a Paris Hilton p-video made from your shower scene and being vood by Snape and Lupin, who mastibated!”

 

Luna asked, softly, distressed in Lily’s ear, “Captain, who or what is a Paris Hilton? I’m very confused. Also… what’s mastibating?”

 

Before Lily could answer that they were all confused Ebony continued, “Whatever!”

 

But Hagrid pointed a wand (a wand that he very much should not have since Lily was pretty sure his had been snapped fifty years ago), at the pink roses, and said with an anticipatory glint of madness in his eye, “These aren’t roses!”

 

He then muttered under his breath, “Well, if you wanted honesty that’s all you had to say.”

 

“That’s not how you spell an MCR song!” Ebony interjected, somehow looking even more insulted than she had by the idea of being a star in her own porno for Snape and Lupin’s viewing pleasure. It appeared that both MCR and GC, whatever they happened to be, should be taken with the upmost seriousness.

 

(Luna asked, once again in Lily’s ear, “Uh, captain, what’s an MCR? Is it also a sub species of nargle?”)

 

“I know, I was just warming up my vocal chords,” Hagrid replied.

 

Which prompted Wizard Lenin to put two and two together along with Lily, “Oh no,”

 

But oh yes, because apparently, Hagrid was going to break out into song once again. Which seemed to be what everyone insisted on doing lately. She’d heard Draco singing, Ebony singing, and Hagrid was about to sing for a second time even. Only, instead of song it was nonsensical Latin chanting. Which… Well, given that Lily went to Hogwarts, wasn’t actually that out of the ordinary.

 

Frankly, it didn’t sound all that different from all the other ridiculous Latin chanting Lily heard all the time.

 

(Although judging by Wizard Lenin’s face this Latin chanting was subpar to the Latin chanting he himself was used to.)

 

The roses abruptly transformed into a large black ball of fire, floating in front of all their faces, Lily, Wizard Lenin, and Luna all leaning backwards away from it. As it looked remarkably diseased or at the very least highly unpleasant to touch.

 

“Okay, now I believe you,” Ebony said to Hagrid (because somehow the black ball of fire equated trustworthiness in Ebony’s eyes when it should be doing the opposite), “WTF is Draco?”

 

Dead, was Lily’s answer, but she doubted Ebony would appreciate that so she held her tongue.

 

Hagrid rolled his eyes in aggravation towards the flames.

 

Ebony peered inside.

 

“… Ellie, somehow, this is ten times as surreal as anything that has ever happened to me in all the years I’ve known you, and I’m not sure how that’s possible.” Wizard Lenin confessed.

 

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Lily said before hesitating and asking, “Are we actually supposed to be able to tell if anything is in the death fire ball?”

 

“Something tells me, that no matter how I respond, I’ll still be surprised by the answer.” Wizard Lenin muttered before sighing, “We should have left her in the room.”

 

“That’s hardly fair, comrade Lenin!” Luna reprimanded with a warning glare towards Wizard Lenin, “She’s as much a victim as the rest of us are, you might be in her high heeled, cramped, shoes soon enough!”

 

“Yes, but doesn’t she seem… Different from the others?” Wizard Lenin asked, his eyes narrowed as Ebony continued to lean in, searching for something.

 

“What do you mean?” Lily said, “She has the same accent, wears the same clothes, the same makeup, I hardly see any noticeable difference.”

 

“No, but… events seem to revolve around her. Whenever she appears or walks into a room, everything stops and gravitates towards her, no matter what was happening before, and no matter how absurd. More, everyone seems interested in her, even someone like Hagrid or Snape who should have absolutely nothing to do with her.”

 

As if to prove this very point, Dumbledore himself walked up from behind, entering the hospital wing and saying in a voice that he probably imagined sounded quite sage, “You see, Enoby, to see what is in the flames you must first find yourself first, k?”

 

“I have found myself, okay, you mean old man!” Hagrid snapped, turning his head to shout at Dumbledore.

 

Dumbledore gaped, and they all watched in various shades of shock and confusion as Hagrid stomped back to the bed he’d come from, shouting, “You are a liar, prof Dumbledurr!”

 

He then lay back down, closed his eyes, and promptly fell asleep. And it seemed whatever was holding this ridiculous scenario together dissipated entirely, leaving the four of them standing there with Dumbledore and Ebony, staring at a giant black ball of fire, waiting for something to happen.

 

And still waiting.

 

“Well, that was fun, and not at all enlightening.” Lily said, and then glancing at her Default companions, “I vote we head back.”

 

“I second that vote, captain,” Luna said.

 

And it seemed that none of the others were opposed either as they all turned on their heel and returned from whence they came leaving Lily to offer a quick and lackluster goodbye to Ebony, “Well, goodbye Ebony, enjoy suicide watch… And I guess we’ll see you later.”

 

Of course, it would end all too soon when Ebony would return the next morning in Transfiguration, with her incredibly short dress with lace and ragged ends, the top of which appeared to be a corset, black fishnets, black high heeled boots featuring some man’s face on them, blood red lipstick, black thick eyeliner, and her worst hair style to date (featuring her hair left dangling all over the place like she’d just climbed out of a well).

 

“You look kawaii, girl,” Hermione, or rather B’loody Mary, said (in a strangely sorrowful tone) to Ebony when Ebony sat down next to her. Which, Lily hated to say it, but at least Hermione looked marginally better than Ebony right now, sure she was still slathered in foundation and eyeliner, but at least she didn’t look like she belonged in her own B-rated horror film.

 

“Fangs, you do too.” Ebony replied, in that same sad tone that Hermione had used.

 

Perhaps more noticeable than the rather banal conversation those two were having was the fact that Harry had decided to participate in more active cannibalism during class, and currently had his teeth in the jugular of some poor Hufflepuff, and was sucking the blood out of his neck even while the boy screamed.

 

Which was what Lily had been mostly preoccupied with before Ebony had bothered showing her face.

“Uh, Harry, do you have to eat the other children?” Lily asked, no, pleaded, but Harry wasn’t even looking at her, he didn’t seem to be looking at anything. There was instead a horrifying dull blankness to his eyes that Lily didn’t think was possible in Death’s gaze.

 

She was looking at his crude and bestial afterimage.

 

(Save me)

 

“Can’t you wait until… Not class?” Lily asked, “I’m sure we can pick you up someone that’s not a student… Maybe Snape? You want to eat Snape instead?”

 

“I say we let him devour our classmates,” Wizard Lenin responded blandly, “Who knows? He might be saving them from this pitiful existence.”

 

“That’s not a good reason to eat people!” Lily snapped back.

 

But Lenin Rabbitson only offered her a far too casual and indifferent shrug, the shock of Harry draining the Hufflepuff of blood having worn off after the first few minutes (in which McGonagall surprisingly didn’t intervene) “I didn’t say it was a good reason to eat people, just if he’s going to do it anyway, then perhaps it’s best to look at the brighter side of the outcomes. After all, I am an optimist.”

 

“I’m pretty sure that’s not optimism,” Lily responded back just as blandly.

 

Thankfully, Lily was saved from trying again as Harry stopped on his own when he caught sight of Ebony, and dropped the Hufflepuff (who now to be slipping into shock and began experience spasms as he lay there on the floor). Harry then said to Ebony, in a voice filled with hopelessness and despair, “Hi.”

 

“Hi,” Ebony responded back, her eyes intent on his, and for a moment they just stared at each other intently, a little too intently really, as if an entire conversation was passing between them without regard to whoever might be watching, completely ignoring Lily and Lenin sitting in the table between them.

 

Then Ebony and Harry both leapt towards each other, crashing between Lily and Lenin and landing on their table, scattering their papers and textbooks everywhere. Cupping Ebony’s cheeks, Harry began pressing his lips to hers ferociously. Hands began to drift, his reached below her robes and under her shirt, she gripped the back of his neck and pulled him closer against her, their hips locking together against the edge of Lily’s table.

 

“Holy shit!” Lily said, throwing herself away from them, wondering how far Ebony and Harry dared to go in a classroom setting.

 

“Stop it now, you horny simpletons!” McGonagall cried in dismay, still not paying any attention at all to the poor Hufflepuff who really did look like he was on the verge of death. Not that Harry or Ebony seemed to care at all what McGonagall thought.

Far more effective was Wizard Lenin, who merely raised Lily’s wand and flung Ebony to one side of the room and Harry to the other, “Now, Harry, why couldn’t you have been sensible and contented yourself to cannibalism rather than sex on my desk? I’ll have you know I use this desk, and I like knowing where it’s been.”

 

Both then fell down from the wall, blinking and flushing, then Ebony stormed back over, cheeks flushed with embarrassment and as soon as she reached Harry she slapped him across the face, “Vampire, you fucker, stop trying to screw me! You know I love Draco!”

 

But then, then Harry’s head fell back again, and it was… It was like she was watching the same thing twice, the motions were the same, even the words (as if the first time it hadn’t even happened), “OMFG, noo, my scar hurts!”

 

And then, just as before, Ebony shouted, completely unconcerned by the prospect of just having cheated on Draco with Harry, “No, I thought you didn’t have a scar anymore!”

 

Harry, once again with exhaustion, sweat dripping down his brow and a worn look in his dull red eyes repeated, “I do, but, Diabolo changed it into a pentagram for me and I always cover it up with foundation.”

 

He coughed into his arm, took a breath, and repeated, “Anyway, my scar hurt, and then I had a vision of what was happening to Draco.”

 

Harry took Ebony’s arm, stared fearfully into her eyes, and Lily repeated the words with him (her own voice far calmer, more detached and uncertain, while his radiated terror beyond understanding), “Volvemort has him bondage!”

 

END OF CHAPTER

 

(Wizard Lenin blinked for a moment, blanched, then looked at Lily, and asked, “Is one supposed to expect this much déjà vu when it comes to the end of the world or should I start being concerned?”

 

Unfortunately, all Lily had to say was, “I think I’m concerned that your other half likes bondage with Draco Malfoy.”)

 

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**AN: Special fangs to Raven, my goffic blood sister, wtf ur supposed to writ this1111 hey raven do you know where my sweater i**


	10. The Death of Snaketail

**AN: Raven, fangs for gelping hn. I’m srry I tak ur poster of Gerard, but that guy is such a fucking sex bomb. Preps stop flammingg! Nd Carnivoorus Muufin, pls give back my sweater.**

**WARNING: Some of this chapter is extremely scary, veower excretion is advizzed!**

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_In which Lily confronts the dark lord Voldemort for the third, yet somehow least anticlimactic, time in her life, Ebony’s hand gun defies physics, and Wizard Lenin is forced to weigh his absolute hatred of Albus Dumbledore against his absolute hatred of Ebony Way._

* * *

 

For a moment, there was no movement from anyone, and then with a look of utter panic, both Harry and Ebony dashed out of the room and out the door leaving Lily, Wizard Lenin, and the rest of them staring after them.

 

Well, everyone except the twitching boy on the floor, who someone really should take to the hospital wing.

 

Slowly, with the cold and ruthless determined confidence that he was known for, Wizard Lenin stood from his seat and pulled his things together, before dragging Lily up with him and pulling them outside of the classroom and after Ebony and Harry who were dashing off ahead of them.

 

“Uh, Lenin, where are we going?” Lily asked, not that she didn’t mind skipping class, but she usually went out of her way to skip Potions, Transfiguration was one of her preferred subjects.

 

“Observing the situation,” Wizard Lenin said, “Important things seem to happen around Ebony Way and I’ll be damned if I miss them. Particularly if they have to do with Voldemort.”

 

Lily blinked, blinked again, and then realized, “Oh, you want to know if your counterpart really is into BDSM with Draco Malfoy or not!”

 

Wizard Lenin grimaced, eyes blazing, and looked as if he was only barely stopping himself from screaming back on her, “…Yes, Lily, I want to know if my main soul really is into BDSM with Draco Malfoy.”

 

“Well… Were you into BDSM with underage boys before all this happened?”

 

He almost stopped walking, as it was though he forced himself to speed up, keeping Ebony and Harry in sight, as he ground out, “What do you think?!”

 

“Well, I don’t know Lenin, we’ve never talked about your sex life,” Lily pointed out, which was true, given that Wizard Lenin didn’t talk about details of his past in general. That said, he’d always left the impression that he hadn’t been close to anyone (well, besides his mysterious childhood friend), and would probably find the intimacy required for sexual situations to be more than a little disconcerting.

 

“There are reasons we do not talk about my sex life!” he shouted as he pulled her along,

 

“…Because you’re a BDSM fiend?” Lily asked and at the look on his face quickly reassured, “Hey, no judgement from me, Lenin… Unless it was with Snape, then I have to confess that I judge quite a bit, and need to let you know that you could have done far better. And that you can do better than Draco Malfoy the Satanist.”

 

“I am not into bondage with young boys, Lily!” he spat out as they followed behind, the path and destination now becoming recognizable to Lily as the shortest distance to Dumbledore’s office.

 

“So just girls then? Well, Draco does have a sort of feminine look to him sometimes… But wait, Lenin, I’m a girl, should I be worried?” Lily looked down at herself then back over at Wizard Lenin. He’d never given the impression that he was interested her, at any point in her life, and even now that Lily had long since passed the point of adolescence he certainly didn’t look interested in the way that Ebony had been interested in Harry only a few minutes before, but one could never really tell with Wizard Lenin.

 

“No, Lily, you don’t need to be worried,” Wizard Lenin flatly responded before shuddering and saying, “Oh look, we’re here, at the headmaster’s office even.”

 

And indeed, they were as the gargoyles stepped aside and allowed Harry, Ebony, then Lily and Wizard Lenin to climb the stairs and reach the door to the headmaster’s office. Ah, the headmaster’s office, filled with such bitter memories and triumphs.

 

Of course, that seemed like ages ago now, and in many ways that Hogwarts, the Hogwarts Lily had become so painfully familiar with, seemed to be disappearing entirely.

 

“Dumbledore! Dumblydore!” Harry and Ebony yelled in tandem as they pounded on the door, which opened abruptly, revealing a rather terse looking Albus Dumbledore.

 

In fact, the man looked… Lily felt a stone plummeting in her, he looked off, there was an edge to him, the kind of edge usually in his eye when he looked at Lily, but then, it was flatter than that, he seemed to have been dulled since she’d last paid attention to him. As if someone had taken the true Albus Dumbledore and replaced him with a synthetic cardboard cutout…

 

And Lily couldn’t help but wonder, in fearful silence, just how many people had been replaced when she wasn’t looking? How far and how fast had this disease spread while she concerned herself with the heir?

 

“What is it that you want now, you despicable snobs?” Dumbledore asked, but Lily was barely listening, honestly feeling a bit dizzy, because how many people had seemed just a bit off recently? How many people had she talked to without realizing that they weren’t even there anymore?

 

Wizard Lenin gripped her arm, pulled Lily next to him, probably to prevent her from wobbling backwards and falling down the stairs.

 

She had to find a way to stop this. There had to be a way to stop this…

 

“Volzemort has Draco!” Ebony and Harry shouted, still at the same time, and with the same desperate look in their eyes.

 

Dumbledore let out a sharp, despairing, and frankly quite malevolent laugh at the words.

 

“No, don’t, we need to save Draco!” Ebony and Harry begged as they looked at him, but they failed to recognize that whatever wore Albus Dumbledore’s face was a thing without pity, without remorse, and without any human sentiment whatsoever.

 

It sneered at them, blue eyes flat and dull, and said, “No, I don’t give a darn what Voldemort does to Draco. Not after how much he misbehaved in school, especially with you, Ebony!”

 

Ebony paled dramatically as Dumbledore pointed an accusing finger at her, but Dumbledore was hardly finished as he continued, “Besides, I never liked him that much anyway.”

 

And Dumbledore then, without further ado, slammed the door in their faces, leaving Lily, Wizard Lenin, Harry, and Ebony to stare at it in shocked disbelief. Lily sat down on the stair, staring into nothing, Albus Dumbledore…

 

She hadn’t liked him, recently, but she remembered how he’d seemed in the beginning. How she’d had that one beautiful conversation with him, the first person to ever even attempt to humor her and… And there was nothing left of him now, not even a grave to mourn him.

 

Harry, Death trapped inside this cheap garish body beside her, began to sob, shudders wracking his frame as he sat down next to Lily, clutching at himself as he moaned, “My Draco!”

 

And Lily wanted to cry, to scream, not for Draco Malfoy, but for Death beside her, for Death shoved into the body of a twelve then seventeen-year-old, dressed in this garish fashion and forced into a personality to match, and left mute and silent inside this boy’s soul.

 

Wizard Lenin sat down next to her, placed a hand on her shoulder, and softly whispered in her ear, “Lily, are you alright?”

 

“He’s…”

 

Wizard Lenin sighed and then said with a rather bitter smile confessed, “You know, the terrible part is, I really enjoyed that. I’ve been wanting to say that all week… He practically stole the words out of my mouth.”

 

Oh, yes, she was sure Wizard Lenin did. And this didn’t make it better, not by any means, but somehow Wizard Lenin managed to bring that dark sense of humor back to the situation. Where he was left in the impossible position of having to say that he liked and admired this shell of Albus Dumbledore, if only because he’d slammed a door in Ebony Way’s face and told her to go fuck herself when she told him that Draco was Voldemort’s sex slave.

 

It was an impossible situation that Wizard Lenin had been left with.

 

And in that was the thought that later, later, they would have a funeral and a wake, for each and every one of them, the mourners comprised of those left behind, Luna, Lily, Rabbit, and Wizard Lenin, and there would be a row of crosses for all those taken and the survivors would dig their own graves so that in time Lily could bury them…

 

“It’s okay,” Ebony said, rubbing a hand on Harry’s back, but he only shook it off, shaking his head back and forth desperately.

 

His tears were thick and dark, running down his face, and sitting next to him Lily could tell that they weren’t eyeliner or tears but instead blood.

 

But then, all at once, his eyes blinked open, the sobbing stopped, and he said in a tone of wonder, “I had an idea!”

 

“What?” Ebony asked, eyes widening and stepping back so that Harry could stand back up again.

 

“You’ll see,” Harry said with a grin, a mischievous glint to his eyes, then he took out his wand and muttered an unfamiliar spell, then, without warning, Lily, Wizard Lenin, Ebony, and Harry were transported from outside the headmaster’s office to outside of a cave in the Forbidden Forest.

 

Lily and Wizard Lenin stumbled to their feet, Lily trying and failing to place their surroundings, and Wizard Lenin giving her a sharp look.

 

“What, don’t look at me, Lenin, I have no idea where we are!” Well, the Forbidden Forest, clearly, but beyond that…

 

Ebony and Harry didn’t seem at all disoriented though as they rushed into the cave with their wands out ready to set spells blazing only to be forced to duck as green light raced to meet them and a voice echoed, “Allah kedabra!”

 

Wizard Lenin’s eyes widened, all expression dripped from his face, and slowly he extended Lily’s wand in his hand.

 

“Lenin…” Lily started, but he didn’t appear to be listening, almost as if he was caught in some sort of a trance as he moved forward to join the other two.

 

Lily scrambled forward to join them, she… She had to go with them, if she was here with them, if she stayed with them, then Lenin couldn’t be taken. It only happened when she wasn’t looking or when she wasn’t there. If she stayed with him then…

 

All four of them stalked forward in silence, towards the source of the voice, beads of sweat dripping down Harry and Ebony’s face while a cold heartless look had entered Lenin’s eyes as he prepared himself to meet his maker.

 

But then… rounding the corner, instead of a mirror of Wizard Lenin, or even Quirrell, was a shuddering, beady eyed, middle aged, and strangely rat like overweight man as well as a battered Draco Malfoy. He flinched at the sight of them, stepping back from Draco, revealing deep gauges in Draco’s skin even while the boy sobbed, dark red tears dripping down his face.

 

And Wizard Lenin sighed, a rather flat look appearing on his face, and he said dully, “Peter Pettigrew, somehow, inconceivable though it is, you’ve somehow sunk even lower than you already had.”

 

Pettigrew? Had Lily heard that name before, it sounded vaguely familiar, like Wizard Lenin had mentioned it offhand at some point…

 

Ebony and Harry charged forward, pushing Pettigrew further away from Draco, and Ebony, once again out of nowhere, brought out her hand gun and began shooting at him (miraculously once again without needing to reload or even turn off the safety).

 

(And the scent of blood, how was it that it was becoming so very familiar to Lily?)

 

“Rid my sight, you despicable preps!” Pettigrew managed to shout, coughing up blood as he did so as the bullets tore through his flesh.

 

Such sad, unworthy, last words for any human being.

 

Of course, then, as his eyes landed on Ebony, the sneer disappeared and he fell to his knees, a strange look of wonder on his face, and Lily had the horrible feeling that she knew exactly what he was going to say.

 

And that Wizard Lenin apparently did too.

 

“Oh no,” Wizard Lenin said, blanching along with Lily and inching away from Pettigrew as if this might stop him from saying whatever he felt the need to say next, “Oh, please, no, wasn’t Hagrid enough?”

 

“Ebony, I love you, will you have sex with me?” The man pleaded, and Lily felt herself paling as she took in the man, this overweight, twitching, monstrosity of a human man and tried to think about him and sex in the same sentence.

 

Ebony blinked, mouth opened, and eloquently asked, “Huh?”

 

To which Pettigrew repeated his damning words, “Enoby, I love you, will you have sex with me?”

 

And Ebony, looking down at him, laughed and crowed, “What the fuck? You torture my bf, then you expect me to fuck you!” she let out another harsh laugh, “God, you are so fucked up, you fucking bastard!”

 

And before Pettigrew could repeat his line Ebony brought forward the gleaming silver knife that she had, only the day before, slit her own wrists with, and stabbed it into Pettigrew’s heart. Pettigrew’s eyes widened, his body convulsed, blood poured out of his lips, and the light of his soul disappeared out of his expression.

 

“No!” he screamed, but it was muffled by the blood spurting out of his lips, even as he twitched there like a demented fish, the afterlife dragging him away against his will while Ebony just stood there, over him, and watched like a particularly sadistic reaper.

 

And Lily, in Ebony’s place, she saw herself standing over this man, offering him a polite if unsympathetic smile, as she took on the mortal form of Death in this living world.

 

Then, all at once, there was nothing left of Peter Pettigrew, not even an echo.

 

Ebony’s twitching fingers dropped the knife, she burst into tears once again, turning into Harry’s arms, and he held her with a grim expression as he looked down at Pettigrew’s corpse, something of Death still flickering inside of him. Lily reached down, drew two fingers across Pettigrew’s face, and closed his eyes shut.

 

Such a sad and meaningless way to depart this earth…

 

“Snaketail, what art thou doing?” A voice, higher pitched, the one they’d heard earlier, echoed down the hallway, along with the faint clack of stilettos on the earth of the cave.

 

Except, no… Lily turned to look down at Wizard Lenin’s feet then back up to his face, and despite the blood and death and utter decay she couldn’t help but ask, “Lenin, is your other self in… drag?”

 

Wizard Lenin only spared her a silent death glare, clearly unwilling to expand further on the sexual escapades he got up to before his death, which apparently not only involved young boys, BDSM, but also Lenin in drag.

 

Lenin, apparently, was one kinky bastard.

 

…Although, he was probably one of the few men who could pull off a dress and stilettos.

 

“We have to go,” Harry said, slinging one arm under Draco’s shoulders to support him and pulling on Ebony’s hand with the other, sparing a desperate look for Lily and Wizard Lenin, “He’s coming.”

 

But was it not better to face whatever was coming for them here and now? To see what Voldemort, Lily’s great nemesis, had been reduced to?

 

“Lily!” Wizard Lenin said to her harshly, pulling on her wrist, “We’ll deal with him, with this, later.”

 

“But…” Lily started.

 

“We’re in his territory, and more, if those two are leaving, if she’s leaving, then we are too.” Wizard Lenin said, “We have larger concerns right now than Voldemort.”

 

Lily nodded slowly and allowed herself to be dragged back out of the cave where she quickly apparted herself and Lenin back to the school, leaving Harry, Ebony, and Draco to somehow navigate using the broomsticks (and where had those broomsticks come from, and for that matter how had they gotten here to start with, and how was all of this even happening…)

 

There at the edge of the lake, in the same spot that she had spoken with Death only a few days before, Lily sat down, unconcerned by the freezing torrential downpour, “So… Dumbledore and Pettigrew.”

 

“Not great losses on this earth, Lily, I assure you,” Wizard Lenin said as he sat down beside her, but his expression was grim, and his pale eyes distant.

 

“But losses all the same,” Lily said as she stared out onto the horizon, “How many are gone without us even noticing?”

 

Wizard Lenin didn’t answer, didn’t bother to, but then he didn’t need to. Perhaps, all of them were gone, all those faces Lily had barely thought to even look at.

 

“Do you think we should leave Hogwarts?” Lily asked, softly, as if she was tasting the words even as she said them, although, a darker part of her wondered if that would even help, if Hogwarts had anything at all to do with it.

 

“No, no I will not go quietly into the night, not yet.” Wizard Lenin said, “It can take my other half, the original, it can take the other horcrux if it wants him, but I won’t be swallowed by this abomination without at least having the chance to spit in its face.”

 

“No,” Wizard Lenin looked directly down at her, rain dripping down his face and into his eyes, his Hogwarts robes clinging to his skin even as he reached down to take her face in his hands, “No, Lily, we stay, until the very end.”

 

END OF CHAPTER

 

(Meanwhile, inside of Hogwarts, with tears of blood in her eyes, Ebony asked the naked Draco on her bed, “It’s so unfair! Why can’t I just be ugly and all plain like all the other girls and preps here?! Except for B’loody Mary, cause she’s not ugly or anything.”

 

Draco wiped away her tears tenderly, ignoring his own wounds and asked, “Why would you want to be ugly? I don’t like the preps anyway, they are such fucking sluts.”

 

This only brought forth more tears as she shook her head desperately, “Yeah, but everyone here is in love with me! Like Snape and Lupin took a video of me, and Haagrid said he is in love with me, Vampire likes me, and now even Snaketail is in love with me!” then with a sob, clutching at Draco, she pleaded, “I just want to be with you, okay Draco? Why couldn’t Satan have made me less beautiful?! I’m good at too many things! Why can’t I just be normal?! It’s a fucking curse!”)

 

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**AN: Aren’t gay guys just so hot?**


	11. Of Mice and Men

**AN: Stoop faming, okay! BTW you suck! From now on evry tim someone flams me I’m going to slit ma wrists. Fangs to Raven for h’lepping and to The Carnivorous Muffin for stilin.**

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_In which Draco Malfoy sings multiple times to get what he wants, with surprising success, some girl named Willow dies in a horrific manner offscreen much to the complete indifference of everyone around her, and Lily confronts her greatest fear in all the world._

* * *

 

 

“We are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men, leaning together, headpiece filled with straw.” Lily recited, kneeling before a row of simple white crosses, in the relentless sleet that had been plaguing Hogwarts for weeks on end with no sign that it would ever truly stop, not until the world itself finally ground itself to a halt, “Alas! Our dried voices, when we whisper together, are quiet and meaningless as wind in dry grass or rats’ feet over broken glass in our dry cellar.”

 

None were marked by names, there had been no need, no reason to, after all, no one aside from herself would think to come here, would recognize what had been lost.

 

“Shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion…” She swallowed, closing her eyes and trying to hold back the terrible vision that screamed inside of her, “Those who have crossed with direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom, remember us –if at all –not as lost violent souls, but only as the hollow men, the stuffed men…”

 

She could continue, T.S. Elliot’s words scraping out of her soul, but there was no sound from her now, only the rain pounding, pounding, pounding down upon her… For the wake of Hogwarts, there could only ever be the sound of silence.

 

The day after their confrontation with Hindenburg, the transformed and corrupted Hindenburg, was in many ways anticlimactic and the most climactic moment thus far. As always, it had in some mysterious way revolved around Ebony Way.

 

Once, Lily had assumed the world had revolved around her, or rather, that it had revolved around Eleanor Lily Potter. And it had, Lily didn’t think she had been mistaken in this, but times had changed and this was no longer the case. Ellie Potter was now one of the inconsequential masses, no more important than Pansy Parkinson, in a way she was perhaps more superfluous than that as Ebony had so thoroughly stolen her own role.

 

Transfiguration, a class she could have sworn they’d just had the day before, featured all of them attempting the bizarre transformation of pentagrams into electric guitars. Something which baffled and frustrated Wizard Lenin to no end, if only because he was failing miserably, and Ebony Way was clearly going to get an O for Outstanding.

 

“Why the hell do I even bother coming to class anymore?” Wizard Lenin asked, crumpling the drawing of his blood red pentagram and throwing it onto the floor, “This is clearly a waste of everyone’s time.”

 

“Because we have nothing better to do, and you wanted to stalk Ebony,” Lily summarized to which she earned a withering glare from Wizard Lenin.

 

“Is it unwarranted?” He asked, before sighing shaking his head, and leaning back in his seat, “Well, all the same, I doubt McGonagall’s in any condition to grade us, she’s been infected.”

 

Lily glanced at McGonagall, who indeed shared that same flat, cardboard, expression of distaste which lingered on Dumbledore and even Snape’s features, and quietly, she agreed, “And another one bites the dust.”

 

Yet another silent death to linger inside of this place.

 

As if to emphasize this point Draco Malfoy appeared out of nothingness, or rather, out of Ebony’s black guitar, and, kneeling on her desk as she blinked up at him with stunned awe and heartfelt tenderness, he pleaded in a truly sorrowful tone, “Enoby, I love you! I dee not care what those fucker preps and posers think, you’re the most beautiful girl in the world!” 

 

Wizard Lenin placed a hand over his eyes, gritted his teeth, and looked about two seconds away from whacking his head against the table. Lily, for her own part, was at least grateful that Draco had decided to wear pants this time.

 

Draco’s crimson eyes bored into Ebony’s, beginning to fill with tears as he grasped at her hands and said, “Before I met you, I used to want to commit suicide all the time. Now, I just want to fucking be with you! I fucking love you!”

 

Then, he took a large breath, a familiar sort of breath, the breath that Lily had seen for days now, one that signaled that Draco Malfoy, the Satanist romantic, was about to burst forth into song.

 

“Oh lord no,” Wizard Lenin said, “Can I not go a day without singing?”

 

But no, apparently they could not, because the song was already bursting forth from Draco Malfoy’s lipstick stained lips, _“You come in cold, you’re covered in blood…”_

 

And of course, it was one that wasn’t in the least bit romantic, yet seemed to truly charm Ebony Way, her blue eyes practically filled with stars as she looked up at him.

 

_“They’re all so happy you’ve arrived. The doctor cuts your cord, hands you to your mom, she sets you free into this life…”_

 

The song continued, the entire class seeming to clap along, until finally the song came to a dramatic finish and Ebony stood, joyful black tears gathering at the edge of her eyes, and cried out, “OMFG!”

 

Then, before either Lily or Wizard Lenin could say anything, she flipped them the bird with her hands still entwined with Draco’s, however her eyes were still on Draco as she exclaimed, “I love you!”

 

Then, she moved in to kiss him passionately for a moment, then, tugging on his hands, pulled him out of the classroom with a smile and into the hallway, leaving the rest of the class to give them a standing ovation, only Lily and Wizard Lenin remaining in their seats.

 

The last sane men to inhabit Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

 

There was a great sigh as Wizard Lenin stood, began to pack his things, while Lily only raised her eyebrows at him increadulously, “Lenin, you can’t be serious.”

 

“Oh, you’ll find I’m quite serious, Lily,” Wizard Lenin said, “I am keeping an eye on that girl even if it means I must listen to Draco Malfoy sing ten thousand times.”

 

“And what if she has nothing to do with it?” Lily asked, “What if the universe is simply… ending?”

 

“I would rather assume Enoby the antichrist is responsible than simply choose to become a nihilist,” Wizard Lenin spat, before regarding her and asking, “Or would you rather stay here, Lily, among all our new gothic friends?”

 

So Lily and Wizard Lenin left the classroom, and, it didn’t take them long to find the black and red oversized poster announcing yet another concert in Hogsmede, this time for the entirely different abbreviation of some group called MCR.

 

“MCR… I wonder if they’re any better than GC,” Lily commented as she tore the poster from the wall, “Funny we didn’t hear about this, given that they cancelled classes for the last one… And that this is happening right now.”

 

“Good, that means we know exactly where those two will be,” Wizard Lenin stated, before pulling her along, “Come on, we’d better get to Hogsmede.”

 

“Oh,” Lily stated suddenly realizing that he really was serious about this, “I am not looking forward to this, do you remember the last time?”

 

“Sacrifices are necessary in war, Lily,” Wizard Lenin stated, which perhaps was fair, but Lily preferred when those necessary sacrifices didn’t involve her ear drums or seeing Draco Malfoy stick his tongue down Ebony’s throat.

 

The walk out of Hogwarts was filled with tense silence, Wizard Lenin thinking his own thoughts while Lily… Her thoughts were plagued with unfilled graves, with a plague that was unseen and unnoticed, stealing through the halls at night and claiming nothing less than the very souls of its victims.

 

When she teleported them to the stage in Hogsmede, the same that had been used in the last concert, she found herself wondering if any of this was real anymore, or if everyone besides her, Wizard Lenin, Luna, and Rabbit even remained.

 

A band played there, dressed in ridiculous dark robes and pale masks, honestly looking a bit like Wizard Lenin’s old cult more than anything else.

 

There towards the front of the mob surrounding the stage was Ebony Way dressed in her usual combination of black leather ridiculously small dress that would have had more decency as a shirt, black leather platinum boots, and blood red fishnets and Draco Malfoy in his baggy shirt and dark baggy pants, both of them twitching back and forth as if on the verge of suffering an epileptic fit, only interrupted by Draco doing his best to choke Ebony with his tongue inside her mouth.

 

And Lily could only wonder if they had any idea how lifeless they looked, “And here, here is the great plummet of mankind, this is where we end.”

 

Wizard Lenin glanced at her before offering a wry smile, “Well, I had never truly thought the human race capable of much, although I hadn’t predicted this. I’d always thought that we would destroy each other through war, Satanism is something of a surprise to me.”

 

Before Lily could comment back there was movement on the stage, there, the band members pulled off the mask adorning their faces, and Lily couldn’t help but turn to look at Wizard Lenin in horror, searching his face to see that he was still there, still standing next to her, still in this world and not his doppelganger on the stage.

 

But Wizard Lenin wasn’t looking at her, he was stepping forward, searching each and every face on the stage, then searching his doppelganger’s, hair still dark, eyes a strange and burning crimson, a leering smile stretched across his lips.

 

“Oh,” Wizard Lenin breathed out, pale eyes widening, “Fuck.”

 

Lily blinked.

 

“WTF Draco, I’m not going to a concert with you!”

 

Lily blinked again, and there she was, standing alone in a Hogwarts hallway, right outside the Transfiguration classroom, or rather, standing next to Ebony Way and Draco Malfoy, Wizard Lenin inexplicably gone. Ebony glared balefully at Draco even as she shouted, shoving him backwards with a pale hand.

 

“Not after what happened to me last time!” Ebony continued, scoffing at Draco’s truly wounded expression, “Even if it’s MCR, and you know how much I lick them.”

 

Lily turned her head, looking down one end of the hallway and back, searching for something, anything, to anchor her. Or rather, searching for Wizard Lenin, that haunting vision of Wizard Lenin’s face, his other’s face, still digging its claws inside of her head.

 

And his eyes, so wide and so blue, as he looked across at his mirror image.  

 

Draco floundered and flushed almost as crimson as his eyes, “What, because we… you know…”

 

“Yeah,” Ebony finished, also flushing to an absurd degree, “Because we… you know…”

 

“We won’t do that again!” Draco promised, “This time, we’re going with an escort.”

 

Now, Lily blinked, because she was trying to correlate escort with what Draco was saying and wondering if he was meaning it in the way she suddenly thought he was meaning it, as a male prostitute, or rather as the old idea of having a chaperone to prevent general naughtiness.

 

Either way, Ebony seemed unduly offended, “OMFG WTF, are you giving into the main stream?!”

 

Ebony’s eyes narrowed as she surveyed him, pushing him again, “So, I guess you’re a prep, or a Christina now, or what?!”

 

“No!” Draco cried out in terror but Ebony did not falter.

 

“Are you becoming a prep or what?!”

 

“Enoby,” Draco pleaded, falling down to his knees now, “I’m not, pls come with me!”

 

But, when she remained unmoved, as if he were the wind howling to the mountains, he once more burst into song, a tactic that had always seemed to work for him in the past, _“Turn on channel seven at a quarter to eight, you see the damn thing it’s just a different day. And no one really knows why this is happening, but it’s happening, and everywhere you go it’s just a different place…”_

 

Strange, how apt Draco’s words sometimes were, always appropriate to the setting even when he himself never seemed to realize it. Something was happening, no one cared, and no one knew why.

 

And, as with every time before, Ebony softened and said, “OK, I guess I will have to.”

 

She then kissed Draco passionately against the lips, and began to walk away, leaving a dazed Draco and Lily behind her. Lily spared a glance for Draco, lifeless, soulless, Draco Malfoy, and without a word turned to keep pace with Ebony, who made her way up the staircases to the seventh floor and into the dormitory where Hermione Queen of Goths waited for them.

 

“Hajimemashita, girl,” Hermione the Bloody said as Ebony opened the door, “BTW, Willow, that fucking girl, that fucking poser, got expulled. She failed all her classes and she skipped math.”

 

Lily blinked, watching the pair of them, and desperately trying to remember if she knew any Willows, or rather, if she knew anyone who had the misfortune of becoming a Willow over the course of the past few weeks.

 

Ebony let out a harsh laugh, cruel merriment dancing in her eyes, “It serves that fucking bitch right!”

 

The pair then looked to Lily, perhaps for confirmation, so Lily hastily nodded and said, “Yes, I hated that stupid… slut.”

 

The pair seemed appeased and began to lounge in the room, eventually putting in what they called a depressing film, something called “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (a movie which, Lily actually found she liked, and wondered if that was a good or horrifying thing, and perhaps the first sign of goffickness taking root inside of her own soul).

 

Wizard Lenin remained absent.

 

Of course, so did Luna, and Rabbit, Blaise and Daphne, Death and Draco…

 

And there was Skeleton Jack upon the screen, his world so filled with possibility and wonder for the first time in decades, and in him she saw what she would have dreamed her life to be instead of a world that was so rapidly draining itself of color.

 

“Maybe Willow will die too,” Ebony mentioned somewhere towards the end of the film, Skeleton Jack staring at the results of his scheming and meddling, his downed ship in a cemetery.

 

“Kawaii,” B’loody Mary responded, as if this was an acceptable response to anything.

 

“It’s kawaii, you fucking bitch!” Ebony corrected, seemingly out of instinct, only for Hermione to shake her head in a way that was at once both strangely energetic while also being lethargic. Like a windup toy that now could only jerk here and there, in its last throes of life, before its gears became too stiff and rusted to permit movement.

 

“Oh yeah,” B’loody Mary added, as if she wasn’t simply casually adding this in conversation, “Oh have a confession, after she got expulled I murder her and Loopin did it with her cause he’s a neckphilac.”

 

Lily felt as if a bomb had exploded, yet somehow no one had noticed, as Hermione Granger cheerfully confessed to murder and rape… Well, the defilement of some girl’s corpse via that homeless man who liked hanging around the castle videotaping naked girls.

 

“Kawaii,” Ebony said with a cheerful smile, turning her attention back to the film, leaving only Lily to stare at them and wonder if the world was so far gone that murder didn’t even count anymore…

 

Well, Ebony had a death count of three already, what with Snape, Lupin, and Pettigrew, and no one seemed to mind. Plus, two of them had come back from the dead without a scratch on them. Clearly, death meant nothing anymore.

 

Which, since Death had died, in the only way left to him, was perhaps to be expected from all of this.

 

“Oh, hey, BTW,” Ebony suddenly exclaimed, “I’m going to a concert with Draco tonight in Hogsmede with MCR. I need to wear, like, the hotset outfit evar.”

 

This was enough for Hermione as she, in a very un-Hermione like manner, sprung to her feet and exclaimed, “OMFG, let’s go shopping!”

 

“In Hot Topic, right?” Ebony asked, as if this was a forgone conclusion, as if there were no other store in the world to be considered but Hot Topic.

 

“No!”

 

Ebony gasped, turned, a look of utter disbelief on her features, “B’loody Mary! Are you a prep?!”

 

“Nooooo! Noooo!” Hermione corrected with a desperation that could only come from one just accused of being a prep, “I found some cool goffick stores near Hogwarts, that’s all!”

 

“Oh, well then,” Lily said, not entirely sure how she felt about the idea of goffism spreading itself into Hogsmede and the outside world. However Lily, as during the whole time, was cheerfully ignored by the pair.

 

“Who told you about them?” Ebony asked even as a much calmer look appeared on her face at the confirmation that B’loody Mary was not one of the b’loody preps.

 

“Dumblydore,” Hermione explained, as if it was perfectly reasonable that Dumbledore had suggested a goffick clothing chain to her, “Let me just call our broms.”

 

“OMFFG, Dumblydore?!” Ebony asked in a strangled whisper, one that Lily would join in with if she had the energy.

 

“Ja, I saw the map for Hogsmede on his desk.”

 

“Right,” Lily said quietly, “Of course you did, why wouldn’t you have?”

 

But again, neither seemed concerned by this and instead they both left, Lily trudging along almost unwillingly, wondering what the hell she was even doing with the pair or where for that matter Wizard Lenin had wound up.

 

There was…

 

There was a terrible fear, a deep dark fear, that she had seen the last of him at the concert, the concert that now appeared to have never happened, or had yet to happen, as time once again tripped over itself.

 

That despite the need and urgency to keep him close she had somehow lost sight of him and… And now Lily was one person closer to being perfectly alone in the universe.

 

They entered some overdecorated black store, one filled with ribbons, crucifixes hung upside down, pentagrams, the anarchist’s a, and what looked like a wide variety of voodoo dolls. Also present were many different almost Victorian styled corsets, many articles of leather, and the strange black baggy pants with chains that Draco seemed so fond of these days.

 

And there, standing at the counter, was the person she had most wanted to see and least wanted to see.

 

Younger, he looked younger, or rather, he looked like he should have at seventeen or sixteen, if he wasn’t in the guise of Lenin Rabbitson. Dark hair that curled about his face, a thin lanky figure stretching out beneath a black turtleneck and black tight pants, a face far too pale beneath thick white makeup, dark stained lips, his eyes ringed in kohl and making all the bluer for it, and not a hint of recognition in his face as he stared across at them, at her.

 

Oh, oh no, it was too soon, it was…

 

Lily leaned over, pressing a hand to her mouth, feeling the urge to vomit and trying to force it in, to force the world to be steady, to force it back into some state where this wasn’t happening, where this couldn’t happen because they’d had no time, and there were supposed to be signs and then he’d return to her head at the very least and…

 

He handed Ebony a pair of dresses, with pale hands sporting black painted fingernails, smiling charmingly at her as he ushered her into a changing room, “We only have these for the real goths.”

 

“The real goths?” Hermione asked, her face flushing as he looked at her, his expression at once so reminiscent of Wizard Lenin putting on the charm that…

 

“Ja,” he said, the smile growing that much wider, “You wouldn’t believe how many posers there are in this town, man. Yesterday, Loopin and Snap tried to buy a goffick camera pouch.”

 

He shook his head, almost as if in pity of those poor wayward souls of Loopin and Snap, “I didn’t even know they had a camera.”

 

Ebony burst out of the changing room, somehow already dressed in one of the black intricate dresses that he had thrust into her arms, red ribbons come out of it, low cut to accentuate her no longer prepubescent breasts, and a huge slit up the side of it that revealed more of her thighs than was decent for any human being, “OMFG no! They’re going to spy on me again!”

 

“Oh, my Satan!” Lenin, this dark, gothic, washed out, diluted version of Lenin exclaimed as he put a hand against his cheek, “You have to buy that outfit!”

 

“Yeah, it looks totally hot!” Hermione said in agreement.

 

The pale remnants of Wizard Lenin shook this thought away and said, “You know what, I’m going to have to give it to you for free, cause you look really hoot in that ootfit.”

 

Before Ebony could say anything or anyone else for that matter, he asked, in a way that was so casual yet at once not, “Hey, are you going to be at the concert tonight?”

 

“Yeah, I am actually,” Ebony stated, “BTW, my name’s Eb’ony Darkness Dimentia Tara Way. What’s yours?”

 

A devilish smile, one so similar to the one he always used to wear, that shark like predatory grin as he ran a hand through black, too black, hair, “Tom Rid, maybe I’ll see you there tonight.”

 

“Yeah, I don’t think so, cause I’m going there with my BF Draaco, you sick perv,” Ebony shouted back, but before Lenin, this horrifying Lenin doppelganger, could beg her to go with him, Hagrid flew in on his broom (as he always seemed to show up at the strangest times).

 

“OMFG, Ebony!” Hagrid cried, “You need to get ot back to the castle into it, now!

 

There was dithering here and there, Ebony taking the dresses and B’loody Mary running away with her, following Hagrid as he issued some dire warning about something that no longer concerned Lily.

 

For nothing concerned Lily anymore.

 

Instead, she stared across at him, at Lenin trapped in Tom Rid’s body, and thought of Death in the rain with blood and tears running down his cheeks. Outside the rain still pounded, relentless as always, and inside her heart beat with a tempo to match it.

 

“And you? You don’t look like much of a goff,” Tom Rid sneered at her, taking in her vibrantly red hair, her bright green eyes, and her pale defined features, “I don’t service preps, you know.”

 

Slowly, out of nothingness, a gun materialized in her hand, she pointed it at his head. She licked her lips, closed her eyes for a moment, and pictured instead the great fields of America, two men on the run, one a fool with his hat removed unable to see the gun pointed at his temple by the only man who had ever been his friend.

 

And in the distance, the mob after his head, shouted.

 

“Look acrost the river, Lennie an’ I’ll tell you so you can almost see it,” Lily started, her eyes still closed, yet her hand unshaking, “We gonna get a little place… We’ll have a cow, an’ we’ll have maybe a pig an’ chikcens… an’ down the flat we’ll have a …little piece alfalfa for the rabbits… And you get to tend the rabbits… You… and me. Ever’body gonna be nice to you. Ain’t gonna be no more trouble. Nobody gonna hurt nobody nor steal from ‘em…”

 

She opened her eyes, desperately ignoring the tears coursing down her cheeks, or the look of stupid confusion and derision on his face, and with a great cry she pulled the trigger.

 

END OF CHAPTER

 

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**AN: Draco’s voice is so amazing, and goffick, and sexy, like a cross between Gerard, Joel, Chester, Pierre, and Marilyn Manson. Don’t you think those guuys are so hawt?**


	12. Grief, Grief Beyond Imagination

**AN: I said stoop flming the strio if ur a prep and de not red it. You can tell weather ur a prep r not buy ma quiz on its on my home page. If ur not then you rock. If you are then foook ooooff! P.S. Willow isn’t really a prep, Raven please do this I promise to give you back your poster. The Carnivorous Muffin, u fucking prep, give me back my sweater!**

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_In which Lily and Luna discuss where they can possibly go from here, Lily attends the same concert for the second time, and Hogwarts continues to crumble_

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The blood, it trickled out of him so quickly, and yet at the same time it almost seemed slow, too slow, as it spread beneath him in an expanding puddle. It wouldn’t reach her feet, she was standing too far from him.

 

His lips were partially open, the breath of slight surprise now forever stamped upon them, and his eyes, his eyes wide and open and so blue as they stared towards the entrance of the shop, the light of the day reflected in them, but not caught in them, his pupils stationary.

 

It was the quiet though, the silence after the gunshot, the sound of silence as she stood over him as his grim reaper, watching and waiting for something, although what she was waiting for she wasn’t sure, because even if he stood back up it wouldn’t be Wizard Lenin in his body, it wasn’t Wizard Lenin she’d killed just now…

 

Her voice caught in her throat, a jagged, broken, jerking sound, the gun fell out of her fingers and hit the floor with a thud, damning her as she reached with trembling fingers for it, willing herself to vanish it back into nonexistence.

 

But everything was shaking, her shoulders and chest, everything shuddering and falling apart and tears rolling down her face, fat and warm and unstoppable even as she looked down at his body and the blood, all of the blood…

 

Her vision beyond blurred, Wizard Lenin reduced to a hazy vision of black and white, but none the less she stepped forward, reached out for his arm, willing herself to not think about how it was still warm but quickly cooling, willing herself not to think as she reached to his eyelids with two desperately shaking fingers and closed them, the black eyeshadow and kohl staining her fingertips, and then, carefully she draped his body over her shoulders and stood, dragging him out of Hogsmede without a care for who might witness it.

 

However, no one seemed capable of witnessing such things anymore, she thought to herself as she limped back to Hogwarts, Wizard Lenin’s corpse far too heavy on her back. No, there were no people left in this world, or at least, none who dared walk in the open, there now in the snow and the rain was Ebony and B’loody Mary, exchanging words with Hagrid, the words “fuck” and “bastard” somehow discernable even over the wind and the weather. However, they didn’t even look over at the sight of red-headed, soaked, Eleanor Lily Potter, dragging the corpse of Tom Riddle over her shoulders, a trail of blood in their wake.

 

The walk was cold and with each numbing step she found herself growing more distant even to herself, until her head was filled only with a strange white noise, thinking thoughts of nothing and dreaming of no one.

 

But soon enough, she found herself at the edge of Black Lake, she stared out across it, forlornly, allowing Wizard Lenin’s earthly shell to fall from her shoulders and drop onto the rocky shore with a thud.

 

Without even looking at him, she made a gondola, red and black, filled with tiger lilies.

 

Then, carefully, so carefully, she moved his body inside, placed his hands over his chest, and stuck a flower inside. The rain had washed away the makeup from his face, tears of black running down his cheeks, but all the same, all the same even like this, he looked like a king.

 

She opened her mouth, to wish him one last farewell, but then closed it, shaking her head as another wrenching sob cut through her throat. Instead, squeezing her eyes shut, she pushed the gondola out into the lake and, with will alone, set it ablaze.

 

She watched then, that bright burst of light in this overwhelming darkness, this constantly overcast world she now found herself in, she watched it as it sailed out and away, dragged off by the tides towards the sea, until it faded from view.

 

But Lily was still here, yes, standing on the shore of the lake, body shaking from the rain, Lily was still here.

 

Slowly, too slowly, she shuddered out a sigh and turned her eyes to Hogwarts, forcing herself step by step up the stairs and all the way into the Default common room.

 

“Hey bitch, you look kawaii.”

 

Lily looked up from the entryway to find Ebony and Hermione talking to a new girl who looked, well, just like the rest. She was wearing a short black corset which made her heaving cleavage heave that much further and the sickening thinness of her waist that much thinner, accentuated with crimson lace that was eerily reminiscent of the color of Wizard Lenin’s blood, joining this was a black and crimson miniskirt, leather fishnet stockings, and black pointed boots. All of this accentuated the eerie, sickly, paleness of her skin and the strange almost gangly look to her too thin limbs.

 

Her hair was dark, her skin was pale, and while her eyes were green it didn’t change the fact that she looked just like all of them did.

 

Lily, still soaked through, standing in wet tennis shoes in the entryway, looking at this newcomer, couldn’t find it in herself to care. Lily moved out of the doorway, past the trio, and instead towards one of the empty chairs, dragging it towards the fireplace.

 

“Ja, but not as kawaii as you,” Ebony answered in a strangely sad tone, one Lily couldn’t quite parse, but didn’t see a real need to.

 

Ebony Way was no longer her problem.

 

“So, are you going to the concert with Draco?” the other, the newcomer, who could be anyone and everyone turned into a goffick disaster for all Lily knew.

 

“Ja!” Ebony replied with enthusiasm.

 

“I’m going with Diabolo,” the other responded with equal enthusiasm.

 

Diabolo, that was goffick Ron, excellent, wonderful, Lily hadn’t had enough of him yet, why not bring him along? Strangely, as the two chatted away, they seemed to have forgotten entirely about Draco having died and then been kidnapped, or, for that matter, about Snape’s descent into pedophila.

 

Such matters were inconsequential, it seemed, in the face of this concert.

 

Like tears in the rain, perhaps.

 

“Ellie?”

 

Lily opened her eyes, there, standing in front of her, was the now post adolescent Luna Lovegood, staring at her with fear and sorrow in her eyes, reaching out and tenderly taking Lily’s hands in hers.

 

Lily felt her mouth twist then, try to form a smile but tearing itself into a wretched frown, instead forming some horrific expression in between as once again Lily’s voice caught in her throat and she began to shake. Without her consent she found herself pulling Luna in with desperation, clinging to her and soaking her clothes through along with Lily’s, Lily’s hands shaking as the sobs came out uncontrollably and she tried to explain.

 

“He’s dead… I had to… He was dead already, I had to… Oh god, I had to shoot him… And I… I can’t… I can’t…” She squeezed Luna harder, ignoring Ebony, her guest, and Hermione B’loody Granger just as surely as they were ignoring Lily and Luna.

 

Luna’s hand rubbed circles on her back, “It’s alright, I saw my mother go to the other side, I think comrade Lenin will prefer it there to here.”

 

That thought alone burned at her eyes, forced tears to pour out faster and more furious than even before.

 

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t…” she kept repeating nonsensically, because even Lily didn’t know what she couldn’t do, only, only every time she closed her eyes she kept seeing him in that last moment, staring out at her with contempt and incomprehension even as she had a gun pointed at his head.

 

And then that moment where he’d been perfectly still, the bullet in his head, and how he’d crumpled to the floor like a puppet whose strings all had been cut.

 

“It’s alright,” Luna drew back, soft pale fingers wiping the tears from Lily’s face as Lily forced her eyes open, “There are other worlds than these.”

 

Lily, slowly, too slowly, forced herself to nod, to push the tears and the grief back down, to look past Luna, now offering a soft and sad smile to Lily, over her shoulder to where Rabbit stood, watching with a cocked head, and dark eyes that revealed nothing at all.

 

“Luna,” Lily said slowly, softly, even as her own fingers reached out to cup Luna’s face, “I’m glad you’re still here.”

 

Perhaps it was wrong, to condemn someone to that, to watching the world unravel itself, but all the same… All the same, even if Death was gone, even if Wizard Lenin was gone, even if Lily was somehow still here in spite of it all…

 

Luna, for now, was still here.

 

And Rabbit, Lily thought as her eyes drifted over to him, Rabbit would always be here.

 

Too soon the door opened, Lily turned, and yes, there was Draco Malfoy in all his goffick glory along with Ronald Diabolo Weasley who also was in full goffick mode. Ron was in a large baggy t-shirt with ‘666’ emblazoned on the front and his face had been plastered with enough foundation that he looked either like a clown from hell or else a geisha gone terribly terribly wrong. Draco, for his own part, was wearing too tight black leather pants a shirt for some sort of band and black Vans shoes, somehow this did actually look better than Diabolo’s getup.

 

There was an uncomfortable moment where they stared with a lustful hunger at Ebony and company and Ebony and company stared with just as much sexual desire back.

 

Not to be outdone Hermione B’loody Mary Granger Smith broke out into a smile as the third man of the evening walked in. None other, than, perhaps predictably, goffic Neville Longbottom, wearing a black band t-shirt, black jeans, black shoes, and his hair had been dyed black and highlighted with garish red streaks.

 

“Neville?” Luna asked, eyes wide as she looked at him, he paused in the doorway, considered her then Lily.

 

Then, in a tone that was far too confident for his own good, as Hermione entered her arm in his and beamed up at his now pale face, “It’s Dracola now.”

 

“Dracola?” Lily asked, unable to quite help herself, as if the ghost of Wizard Lenin had taken hold of her tongue, “Or Dracula?”

Neville, however, didn’t answer this, rather he continued his explanation, “I used to be called Navel, but it turned out I was kidnapped at birth and my real family were vampires. They died in a car crash. I converted to Satanism and I went goff, I’m in Slytherin now.”

 

Well, he and Hermione Granger were just made for each other then, so many vampire orphans, what was the world going to do with all of them?

 

If there was a silver lining to shooting Wizard Lenin in the head though, it was that Neville’s sudden appearance meant nothing to her, she merely blinked and then turned away. There was a bit more chatting and then the girls looped their hands through the boys’ arms and proceeded to walk out the door.

 

Luna tugged on Lily’s hand, “Ellie, we should go.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Ellie, what if something happens?” Luna said, “Better to be where the tree falls then wonder if it ever existed in the first place.”

 

Lily allowed herself to be pulled up, Rabbit pulled along with her, but that question still resounded in her own mind. Why?

 

Why care?

 

Why go to this Hogsmeade concert, one she had been to already even, she didn’t need to see this. Why shouldn’t she just let these people disappear entirely?

 

They all piled into Draco’s flying black Mercedes-Benz, Lily, Luna, and Rabbit squished together in the one corner filled with color, Luna dressed in overwhelming blues and yellows while Lily wore her typical brightly colored sweater. They watched as Ebony and gang proceeded to first puff on weed, then snort cocaine, and then smoke white rocks of crack, bursting into laughter and filling the car with the unmistakable scent of narcotics as they made their way towards Hogsmeade.

 

And in the background, Marylin Manson whispered into each of their ears among the discord of guitars, _“To take some drugs, say to make us feel hollow. We love in vain, narcissistic and so shallow. The cops and queers swim, you have to swallow. Hate today, no love for tomorrow.”_

Draco climbed on top of Ebony, his tongue licking her jaw line and then entering her lips and tangling with hers, him squirming on her lap, his pelvis rubbing against her abdomen in erratic twists and turns of his body.

 

This, Lily thought as she closed her eyes, was the scent and sound of hell.

_“We’re all stars now in the dope show, we’re all stars now in the dope show. There’s lots of pretty pretty ones who want to get you high. But all the pretty pretty ones will leave you alone and blow your mind.”_

 

“Hey, what about that shroopid fucking Brittany, eh?” Neville asked, Hermione tilting her head back and laughing and the others joining in like jackals, “Such a fucking prep, eh?”

 

“Fooking Brittany!” Ron jeered, his lips twisted and stained black by the third unnamed goff’s lipstick, taking the pipe of crack from her and inhaling long and deep.

 

_“Drugs, they say are made in California. We love your face, we’d really like to sell you. The cops and queers, make good-looking models. I hate today, who will I wake up with tomorrow?”_

 

“What about Ellie?” B’loody Hermione said, pointing to Lily, Luna, and Rabbit, a sneer on her face, “She’s fooking prep too, right?”

 

And then, pointing at Lily, at Lily’s impassive face staring at them in judgement, they broke into laughter, rolling in seats and almost onto the floor of the car. Luna’s hand in Lily’s, tightened briefly, Luna’s eyes turning, a dazed robin’s blue, to stare into hers.

 

Soon though they were there, piling out of Draco’s car and back into the night air, blissfully clean after that car. Ebony and the rest darted towards the stage, Lily following at a distance, a cold stone settling into her stomach as she began to anticipate what she would see.

 

There on the stage was the singer, the same singer from before, a man crooning to the audience with pale blue eyes, the audience bouncing up and down in a great faceless wave. And then, just as before, the man reached up and tore at his own face, taking off the mask, while the other bandmembers followed suit.

 

And there he was, just as he had been there once before, Wizard Lenin’s crimson eyed doppelganger, the omen of Wizard Lenin’s death. Or perhaps, perhaps more horrifyingly yet, perhaps Wizard Lenin himself.

 

The audience scream and quickly fled, trampling over each other as they ran from the venue, until only Luna, Rabbit, Lily, Ebony, and Draco remained.

 

“It’s Vladimort!” Draco hissed, “And the Death Dealers!”

 

The stone in Lily’s chest eased slightly, yes, this might be Hindenburg, they had yet to see him, yes it could be him. Except, except, she had almost been hoping to see Wizard Lenin again. Even in these most horrific of circumstances.

 

“You moronic idiots!” the doppelganger shouted from the stage, his voice so similar to Lenin’s, pointing down at them his face morphed into one that seemed, strangely, not wrathful, but rather the face of a man who questioned his own existence, filled with angst, “Enoby, I told you to kill Vampire! Thou hath failed, and now I shall kill thou and Draco.”

 

No, no, this wasn’t him, this couldn’t be Wizard Lenin. Even in his darkest of moments, at his most brainwashed, he would never speak like this. Perhaps the other hadn’t been Wizard Lenin either, perhaps she’d killed this one and he’d been resurrected. A strange, burning hope spread through her, because for all she knew she had merely killed Hindenburg.

 

She found herself watching with wide and suddenly interested eyes.

 

Ebony fell to her knees, Draco along with her, and together they begged, “No, no, please!”

 

The man smiled, pulled a knife from his robes, but before he could move forward there, on a broomstick, flying in, was Dumbledore with dyed black hair with a black robe with the words “Avril Levine” on the back, he pointed his wand at the stage and gave a shout, Hindenburg stepping backward with a hiss, then, turning on his heel and fleeing the stage.

 

And Lily, even though it was still snowing and raining, even though everything was just as it was before, even though she’d seen Dumbledore sink lower than she’d ever thought possible, she couldn’t help a small, desperately hopeful smile which tore across her face. Tomorrow, yes, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, Lily would be going back to that gothic store and she would find him.

 

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**AN: Tom Riddle is bisejual and likes to do makeup.**


	13. Les Fleurs du Mals

**AN: I said stoop flaming! If you do then you’re a fooking prep! Fangs to Raven for the help and stuff. You rock, n r not a prep. Fangs for ma sweater. The Carnovirous Muffin, burn in hell, u fooking prep, and give me back ma poster.**

**P.S. Da oder easen Dumbledurr swer is cuz he tryn to goffick so there.**

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**666**

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_In which Dumbledore undergoes a midlife crisis of the goffick variety, Lily pulls a “My Fair Lady” also of the goffick variety, and outside the halls of Hogwarts it is still both snowing and raining._

* * *

 

If Lily wasn’t determined to be optimistic she would have taken the state of the Great Hall the next morning as a worrisome sign. Everything was coated now in thick black paint, the windows covered and the sky a looming thunder storm, and posters of strange unfamiliar pop groups like “The Backstreet Boys” and “Ashley Simpson” adorning the walls where the house banners had so recently been placed. The only color in the place seemed to come from Luna and Lily, or else from the bits of black paint that had flaked off, revealing a thick blindingly fluorescent pink coat beneath it.

 

Matching their surroundings Ebony was wearing her usual thick black eyeliner, black eyeshadow, blood red lipstick, and a black leather dress that revealed more cleavage than a prostitute would be comfortable with that also sported several dashing rips, as if it had been shoved into an industrial blender. There was one particularly large rip across her pale stomach so that Lily could have that much better of a view of her skull belly ring comprised of what appeared to be black and red diamonds.

 

Now, Lily wasn’t one to define class, or to thrust her ideas of aristocracy upon others, but she couldn’t help the haunting almost Lenin-esque voice in her head that commented that one could not sink much lower than skull belly rings.

 

B’loody Hermione, queen of Scots, wasn’t doing much better for her own part. She was wearing a black leather mini-skirt which was dangerously close to displaying her underwear for all the world to see, along with a baggy t-shirt proclaiming “Good Chralootte”, black fishnet tights, and black pointy boots.

 

And the new nameless girl, whose presence hadn’t even remotely been explained to Lily, was still sitting at the table fitting in perfectly with her long black dress decorated in garish red writing complimented by her thigh high pointed boots and fishnets.

 

“WTF?!” Ebony declared as she took her seat next to Hermione the Bloody and… new girl. Hearing her outburst, Harry, Draco, and Neville in their gothic glory appeared from out of the wood works to crowd around Ebony.

 

“Great, the gang’s all here,” Lily noted to Luna and Rabbit, good god, Lily was resorting to talking to Rabbit, that surely was a more ominous sign than anything else. Although, if Lily thought about it, then Rabbit was transitioning the best into this goffick world than either Lily or Luna.

 

Even before this he had been rather pale and colorless, sitting amongst his goffick peers, if he was dressed in a more punk rock look, his hair gelled back perhaps, his eyes darkened with makeup, a Billy Idol feel pushed upon him, then he’d be indistinguishable from the rest.

 

Luna nodded distantly but kept her eyes focused on the group, clearly fascinated despite herself, which… Well, there was something to that. It was a bit like watching a train wreck.

 

“Who do you think is sexier, Mikey, or Gerrard Way, or Billy Joe Armstrong?” Hermione asked with a rather dreamy expression on her face, which was quickly joined by the others, including Harry, Draco, and Neville.

 

“Oh, Gerrard Way, he has those fucking hawt blue eyes,” Harry announced, before flushing as his eyes darted towards Draco, likely thinking of Draco’s pale lithe body… Which, Lily had been hoping to forget that her gothic brother version of Death had the hots for Satanist Draco Malfoy.

 

“But Billy’s hair, Vampire,” Draco interjected, “And the way he flips it out of his eyes when he sings, major fucking hottie.”

 

There was much debate as Lily, Luna, and even Rabbit silently watched as the group tried and failed to come to a consensus over the sexiest goffick man alive. Lily herself couldn’t much judge as she had absolutely no idea who any of these men were supposed to be. However, given Ebony and company’s taste, she was betting that Lily would not be one to find them attractive.

 

“Those guys are so fucking hot,” Neville proclaimed, tearing at his dyed hair in anguish, clearly too overcome by these men’s combined sexiness to come to a rational decision of who was the sexiest.

 

However, any response to Neville was cut off as, behind them, a shadow loomed. Turning, Lily saw none other than Dumbledore, only, a Dumbledore that had lost his mind.

 

“My god,” Lily said, but no, she wasn’t imagining the black dyed beard, dyed with the same cheap hair dye that she had once used to impersonate Lily Riddle, or the overly thick foundation plastered to his skin.

 

She knew she had seen it the night before at the concert with the man that she hoped, prayed, was Hindenburg and not Wizard Lenin, and that even before then Dumbledore had been long since assimilated into the goffick borg, but all the same there was something about seeing the transformation in broad daylight.

 

“…Dumbledore?!” Lily’s goffick cohorts gasped in shock and horror, which was more than warranted, as it was both shocking and horrifying.

 

“WTF?!” Ebony shouted, a raging fire burning in her own pale blue eyes, “I thought he was just wearing that to scare Voldemort!”

 

Dumbledore, however, didn’t seem to mind Ebony’s outburst as he cheerfully said, “Hello everyone!”

 

“Hello Headmaster Dumbledore,” Luna replied, alone, as everyone else was too busy staring at the man in complete and utter disbelief. Well, except for Rabbit, who was staring with the same lack of expression that he always had.

 

“As you can see,” Dumbledore said motioning to their surroundings, “I gave the room a makeover. Whjat do you think about it?”

 

Gryffindor’s table, now sporting students wearing nothing but pinks and pastels, gave out a large cheer while the goffick crew, for once, appeared to agree with Lily as they shook their heads in stark disapproval.

 

“BTW, you can call me Albert,” Dumbledore confided, leaning close to Ebony as he said this, a twinkle in his blue eyes. And there was such a desperation in him, a need for Ebony Way’s approval that Lily wondered if he could even justify to himself, if he was capable of such justifications anymore.

 

“I thought your name was Albus,” Lily noted, but Dumbledore didn’t seem to have time for that as the rest of Default, or well, the goffick invasion of Default, stood in unison and made their way out the doors and to classes, Harry glaring at Draco and Ebony as they held hands and lust danced gleefully in their eyes as they looked at one another, tears of blood once again flowing down his pallid cheeks.

 

And what a sight that was, still, even now, blood like tears flowing from Death’s eyes with reckless abandon…

 

And just before they left the new girl shouted, loud enough so that Dumbledore could hear, “I bet he’s having a midlife crisis!”

 

For once, Lily thought as her eyes turned to Dumbledore, she almost pitied the man as he stood there. He seemed… so alone and broken as he stared after them, this golden beautiful group of girls and boys. His hand, weathered by age, would reach out like the paintings in the old tradition, and in every line in every painted vein there is the wanting, the desperate underwritten desire as he reached out, never to touch.

 

His eyes turned towards her, bright and burning, “You, why do you ruin everything you touch, you ludicrous motherfucker?!”

 

Without another word he stormed away from them, dark robes billowing behind him, leaving Lily to stare after him.

 

“Don’t listen, Ellie, he’s not himself,” Luna said quietly.

 

“Are any of us?” Lily asked, because she was no longer sure who had escaped and who had not, or what faculties were left to them if any. She was, so tired. Still, there was a spark of hope left in her yet.

 

“I like to think I am still myself,” Luna said with a small if somewhat sad smile, “But then, perhaps, having only ever been myself, I would not know the difference.”

 

That, of course, was the problem, Lily didn’t think any of them had noticed the difference. Except, perhaps, for Death in the guise of her younger brother, the younger brother she still desperately hoped was not Death at all.

 

“Did you hear, Ellie, the concert’s back on,” Luna said, sipping orange juice with a cheer that belied her own announcement.

 

“You must be joking,” Lily said but Luna shook her head, quite serious.

 

“Ebony said it was postponed since the Death Dealers and He Who Must Not Be Named showed up last time.”

 

“Well, isn’t that just wonderful?” Lily asked, before sighing and dragging a hand through her red hair, just what she needed, another bloody concert.

 

Lily sighed again, looking at their surroundings, the posters on the walls, then glancing back at Luna, “Do you mind, watching Rabbit again, I mean. There’s… There’s something I have to do, check on…”

 

“I can watch him,” Luna said, “But Ellie, where are you going?”

 

“Not far, and hopefully not for very long either, I’m… I’m looking for Lenin.”

 

Luna did not voice whether this was a lost cause or not, she simply stared with an understanding that was too raw for Lily to be truly comfortable with. None the less, none the less, Lily would do what she must.

 

Because though she had sent his body out to sea on a great gondola, though she had watched the fires consume his mortal flesh, this world no longer seemed consistent, and so… And so… She would hope, with a desperation that perhaps Albus Dumbledore, of all people, would understand.

 

“I’ll be back later, promise.” Lily said, squeezing Luna’s hand, and Luna simply smiled back and wished her good luck.

 

Outside it was still snowing and raining, as always, like the day itself was stuck in a kind of loop, the weather never changing yet the grounds of Hogwarts no worse for it. Lily, as she walked into Hogsmeade, absently wondered if it rained in hell.

 

Eventually, soaked, she found herself standing outside of the store, this black painted store where even the windowsills were a deep black, and was utterly paralyzed. Because… What if she found him? What if she didn’t? What if he was there except he wasn’t, what if Tom Rid stood in his place?

 

But then, what if it was Wizard Lenin?

 

For that, surely, she must try…

 

She opened the door, a small bell announcing her entrance, a mournful voice of an angsty young man sang out in an unfamiliar melody, _“I walk a lonely road, the only one that I have ever known. Don’t know where it goes, but it’s only me, and I walk alone.”_

 

Everything was as it had been when she’d first entered it, the day before, there was no blood on the carpet or the walls, the corsets, crucifixes, and chains were all in their original positions. And there, there behind the counter, there he was exactly as he’d been only yesterday.

 

Tall and familiar, younger than he had any right to be, with dark hair curling about his face, that black turtleneck and those dark tight pants, dark stained lips, eyeshadow, and eyes ringed in kohl, fingernails painted black…

 

_“I walk this empty street on the boulevard of broken dreams where the city sleeps, and I’m the only one, and I walk alone.”_

 

And just as before he stared down at her in contempt and derision, so like and unlike himself in the same moment, “I don’t service preps, you know.”

 

Despite herself, or perhaps because of herself and the surreal nature of this scene, Lily felt her lips quirk into a desperate smile.

 

Because she didn’t know if this was what she had wanted or not, whether that sickening lurching in her stomach wasn’t truly relief that the decision had been taken out of her hands, because she didn’t know if she had the strength to kill him again. Or perhaps, perhaps it wasn’t Lenin at all, perhaps this was a sign that it was Hindenburg who was gone from this world…

 

But he was familiar, even standing there, sneering at her, he was so hauntingly familiar.

 

“Snap and Loopin were bad enough, then Dumbledurr, I have a reputation to uphold, fucker prep,” he sneered, flipping open a copy of “ _Les Fleurs du Mal_ ” and perusing it at his leisure as Lily continued to stand there, a preppy eyesore in his utopia of Satanism.

 

She stepped in further, fingered silver chains attached to baggy pants, utterly silent even as the song continued.

 

_“My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me. My shallow heart’s the only thing that’s beating. Sometimes, I wish someone out there will find me. Till then, I walk alone.”_

 

She closed her eyes, breathing out, her fingers twitching as if to summon the gun once again. But… She opened her eyes and stared at him, took him in piece by piece, and watched as the resistance fell from his expression. As he looked at her, took in all the broken pieces of Lily, and seemed to recognize something in her.

 

He stepped out from behind the counter, setting his book face down on the counter, and moved towards her. He took her face in his hands, warmer than she’d thought they’d be, and he twisted her face this way and that in the light, like he was looking for something.

 

Lily’s eyes fluttered shut once again, her lips pressing together, searching for something within herself, something she no longer knew how to recognize, that indifferent independence that she had once had when she had known the world was nothing but cardboard…

 

_“I’m walking down the line that divides me somewhere in my mind. On the border line of the edge, and where I walk alone.”_

 

“I did not realize you had such eyes,” he whispered, her eyes flew open and she found him looking at her, a softer expression, that expression that he had so rarely given her… But he had given it to her, sparingly throughout the years, and she knew it intimately.

 

“There is such a sorrowful evilness in them,” he continued, brushing his thumbs across her cheekbones, just beneath the hollows of her eyes. Yet, even in his fingers, there was the shadow of something both terribly bitter and sweet.

_“Read between the lines, what’s fucked up and everything’s alright. Check my vital signs to know I’m still alive. And I walk alone.”_

 

“You, fucking prep, have potential,” he grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her into his back office, past all his wares and sitting her down in front of a great mirror surrounded by fluorescent lights, so that Lily was staring at a fully lit version of herself. Or rather, that still unfamiliar reflection of Lily, the young adult.

 

There were traces of the twelve-year-old she’d been within her, but all the same, Lily still could barely recognize herself in the thickly lashed green eyes that stared back at her, in the curve of her lips and the way her thick red hair now framed her face rather than overwhelmed it.

 

His hands fell on her shoulders, his face next to hers as he inspected her reflection, “Yes, yes, you certainly have potential.”

 

Without further ado he reached into a drawer and drew out an assortment of cosmetics, eyeshadow, eyeliner, lipstick, rouge, mascara, the works it seemed… Lily felt her eyes widen and she made to say something, but a pale finger fell across her lips and effectively silenced her.

 

And how was it, that even lightly pressed against her lips, his index finger was so warm?

 

“Not until I’m done with you,” he commanded, before, with that softer smile stating, “The angels, motherfucker, will weep at the sight of you.”  

 

With that he spun her chair so that she was facing him, tilting her head towards him, and commanding, “Now, close your eyes.”

 

He brought up one of the eyeliner pencils and began to trace the edge of her lids, murmuring to himself as he did so, “You’re lucky you’re so pale, you don’t have to wear foundation.”

 

Lily however, just sat there with her eyes closed, not really sure what to feel about all of this, or even entirely sure what was happening. Inside her was a great storm that was too large to mull even over questions she should be asking herself. She found herself to be in some sort of numb daze, pushed and pulled about by the tides, but unable to find the direction once again towards the shore.

 

“Open them and look up towards the ceiling,” the pencil traced now the edge of her lower lids, “And don’t blink, you stupid prep.”

 

How was it that she was so familiar with him, that she could tell, even now, that it was Wizard Lenin’s hands gripping her chin and tilting it upwards? That, though his grip seemed too firm for comfort, there was still an underlying tenderness to it that spoke of familiarity with her, a familiarity he himself didn’t even recognize.

 

And she saw his corpse on the floor of this very shop.

 

He set the eyeliner down, reached for the mascara, and dutifully began to apply it to her upper and lower lashes. Blinking afterwards, she noted just how close his face was to hers, and how, even though his expression displayed none of this, she had the feeling he knew exactly how close he was to her.

 

Up close, his eyes seemed bluer, for all their paleness, than they ever were at a distance.

 

“Now, part your lips,” he opened a tube of red, redder than her hair or any sunset, lipstick and carefully applied it to her parted lips.

 

Then, stepping back, he turned her chair towards the mirror, where… Where a quite different Lily was staring back. His hands threaded themselves through her hair as he inspected it, “Red, I think, is quite goffick. Wear the right makeup and it doesn’t make you look nearly so preppy, and black, though goffick, would not suit you.”

 

He then fingered her clothing with disdain, “The sweater though, has to fucking go.”

 

He walked back into his store for a few moments and returned with a floor length, low cut gown, one decorated at the edges with silver stars. He threw it at her, “Here, this will do.”

 

With that Lily found herself thrown into a changing room, the same one Ebony had been in only yesterday. It was decorated with black, flickering, candles that gave off next to no light. Lily, for a moment, stood there dumbly, staring at herself in the mirror inside.

 

She looked like a doll, a stunned doll, with eyelashes larger and darker than she would have thought possible, eyes ringed in thick black, and her lips bright and accented. She reached out and touched the glass with pale fingers, and despite everything, thought that he had been right, her face no longer matched her clothing.

 

If she had any decency at all she would shoot him again, if he was in there, if any part of him was still in there then she could do nothing less. Even if he only rose from the grave again, if he kept coming back and back, then if she had any decency at all…

 

Almost without thought she pulled her sweater over her head and stepped out of her shorts and shoes, there, she stared at herself in her underwear, still hopelessly unfamiliar. Without a word, staring at herself in the mirror, trying to catch sight of that sorrowful evilness that he’d seen in her eyes, she stepped into the dark dress and began to fasten it.

 

She stepped out.

 

He was leaning against the counter, arms crossed, and as he looked at her there was pride in his gaze, pride and warmth, and something hotter than either, something passionate and appraising as he took her in.

 

“There, that’s better, don’t you think?”

 

“Lily,” Lily said, insisted as she stepped towards him, a smile somehow growing across her painted lips. Was this the first thing she’d said to him? Since “Of Mice and Men”?

 

He considered this, reaching out for her hand and taking it in his, “Lily, yes, not bad, not nearly as preppy as Britany or Ellie.”

 

Then, without another word, he pulled her forward towards him and then brought his lips to hers, staining the edges of her lips black. And the world, for a moment, seemed to stop.

 

“ _Folly, depravity, greed, mortal sin invade our souls and rack our flesh,_ ” he whispered against her ear, pressing her closer to him, his hands snaking up her back and entwining themselves in her hair, “ _We feed our gentle guilt, gracious regrets, that breed like vermin glutting on foul beggars’ skin._ ”

 

“Lenin,” Lily whispered, eyes fluttering closed, asking, “What are you…”

 

He kissed her again, one hand now supporting the back of her head to push her closer, stealing her words and breath from her before pulling back so that he could continue to whisper against her lips, “ _Our sins are stubborn; our repentance, faint. We take a handsome price for our confession, happy once more to wallow in transgression, thinking vile tears will cleans us of all taint._ ”

 

His other hand reached towards the back of her dress, fingers looping through the ties which held the dress upright, slowly and almost teasingly beginning to undo them one by one.

 

“ _On evil’s cushion poised, His Majesty, Satan Thrice-Great, lulls our charmed soul, until He turns to vapor what was once our will: Rich ore, transmuted by his alchemy,_ ” the laces, now undone, caused the front of her dress to fall limp, with a speed Lily didn’t even realize she caught it and held it with one hand.

 

At the sight of her hand, Lenin, or rather, the goffick Lenin, gave her a look that was a touch amused. The hand that had been at the back of her head moved itself to curl through her hair, while the other now gently rested itself over Lily’s clutching at her dress.

 

And it was still so very warm against her own pale skin still chilled by the rain.

 

“ _He holds the strings that move us, limb by limb! We yield, enthralled, to things repugnant, base; each day, towards Hell, with slow unhurried pace, we sink, uncowed, through shadows, stinking, grim,_ ” carefully, eyes on her, he pried her hand from her dress, so that they both watched as it tumbled to her feet, so that Lily was like a pale moon standing in a patch of night sky.

 

And he stared at her, and as he did, she imagined that she recognized the hunger in his eyes. It was the look Ebony and Draco gave each other every morning, that Harry gave Draco then Ebony.

 

Desire, irrational mindless desire of the flesh, a desire for a Lily that only a few weeks had been much too young for such things and a Wizard Lenin that had been far too old.

 

He reached out for her once again, pulling her to him, pressing his lips softly against hers even as his hand began to undo the clasp of her bra, and still, he whispered softly, something almost nostalgic laced inside of his words, “ _Like some lewd rake with his old worn-out whore, nibbling her suffering teats, we seize our sly delight, that, like an orange—withered, dry—we squeeze and press for juice that is no more._ ”

 

The bra slid off far more easily than the dress, she barely noticed as his hands slid up to cup her breasts, still speaking to her, looking at her with a shadow of regret, perhaps apology, in his eyes, “ _Our brains teem with a race of Fiends, who frolic thick as a million gut-worms; with each breath, our lungs drink deep, suck down a stream of Death—dim-lit—to low-moaned whimpers melancholic.”_

 

Next, he lifted his own shirt over his head, cast it to the side, throwing it onto the counter to join his abandoned book of poetry, for the moment he was no longer touching her, she felt so very cold, “ _If poison, fire, blade, rape do not succeed in sewing on that dull embroidery of our pathetic lives their artistry, it’s that our soul, alas, shrinks from the deed._ ”

 

Even as he dragged his teeth along her jaw, down her neck and across her collarbone, in the valley between her breasts he spoke, “ _And yet, among the beasts and creatures all—panther, snake, scorpion, jackal, ape, hound, hawk—monsters that crawl, and shriek, and grunt, and squawk, in our vice filled menagerie’s caterwaul…_ ”

 

She dug her fingers into his hair, trying to ground herself, to come to grips with what was clearly happening and what she, at least silently, appeared to be consenting to. Besides, with dark words that spoke of the flowers that grew from evil itself, this goffick parody of Lenin spoke enough for both of them, “ _One worse is there, fit to heap scorn upon—more ugly, rank! Though noiseless, calm, and still, yet would he turn the earth to scraps and swill, swallow it whole in one great, gaping yawn,_ ”

 

He brought his eyes up to look at her one final time, hands cradling her face as he announced his final words even as his naked skin burned against hers, “ _Ennui! That monster frail!—With eye wherein a chance tear gleams, he dreams of gibbets, while smoking his hookah, with a dainty smile… --You know him, reader,--hypocrite—my twin!”_

 

And she reached forward, tugging him against her, and stealing whatever else he might have to say. Even as his book of poetry remained, an abandoned witness, carelessly left open on his countertop.

 

END OF CHAPTER

 

(Meanwhile, in a girl’s lavatory, as Ebony Way tearfully sat in a stall with a joint in her fingers, staring in dismay at both Hagrid and Dumbledore as they confronted her after another fight with Draco, asked, “WTF do you think you are doing in da girl’s room?”

 

Dumbledore only said, as if it was perfectly natural for him to be in the girl’s bathroom, “Hey, I need to ask you a question.”

 

Dumbledore then pulled out his ludicrous black purse that was obviously intended to be goffick in nature, “What are you wearing to the concert?”

 

Ebony dropped her joint in shock and gasped, “You know who MCR are?”

 

“No,” the goffick version of Dumbledore reassured her, “I just saw there was a concert that a lot of goffs and punks were going to.”

 

And then, rather lamely, he tacked on, “Anyway, Draco has a surprise for you.”)

 

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	14. Snape's Lithe Pale Body

**AN: I said I do not icur what you fink! Stove flamming OK preps! One, fangs to Raven for the help. One, oh yeah, BTW, ill be on vacation in Transylvania for the next three days so dee not expect updats. The Carnivorous Muffin, u rock.**

**666**

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**666**

_In which Lily experiences either her first bout with love, an existential crisis, or a sexual awakening, the new and improved version of Wizard Lenin proves to be just as ambitious as the last though his goals tend towards other directions, and Ebony Way gains delicious blackmail._

* * *

 

The ceiling of Wizard Lenin’s store was black, a surprising pitch black that Lily could not have expected to have been produced by a few mere coats of paint, but none the less as she stared up on it, flat on her back, it seemed to suck all the wayward particles of light that drifted in through the doorway or windows inside of it.

 

Outside time seemed to have stood still, the day unchanged, the sleet still coming down in waves as it had that morning, the day before, and the day before even that, since the beginning when Ebony Way had first made her appearance at Hogwarts.

 

And Lily was lying on the carpet of Wizard Lenin’s store, bare feet brushing against a rack containing men’s baggy pants, the chains attached to them tinkling like windchimes every time she brushed against them, and, her clothing still rumpled in a pile only just within reach. A single, pale, arm draped over her, belonging to the unclothed gothic Wizard Lenin, somehow closer to her and further than he’d ever been before.

 

For now, though, it was quiet, and Lily could imagine that they were in any time and any place but here, the same yet not the same, and yet…

 

And yet, in a single instant, skin against skin, in that timeless act of pleasure and reproduction, they were hardly the same at all.

 

And Lily didn’t know if Wizard Lenin was even capable of recognizing something like that anymore.

 

“Your first time, prep?” he asked, she turned her head, he was looking at her, eyes sharp and blue, eyeliner running down his cheeks like tears, blurred by sweat and sex.

 

“Yes,” there was no real inflection to her response, no thought to it, but he seemed to read something a bit pathetic inside of it as he smirked at her, adjusted himself, and moved her just a bit closer towards him, his teeth scraping against her jaw again.

 

“Oh, you were a prep, weren’t you?” he asked, though it seemed rhetorical as he laughed at his own private joke, “Such a Christina.”

 

He rolled over top of her, lips moving to her own, hands moving over her body again as he leaned in, apparently more than ready for round two, “You’re fucking hot now though.”

 

Lily felt something burn inside her then, at the feeling of his lips smiling against hers, as if this, this parody of human interaction amused him, and furiously rolled them again so that she was straddling him, ignoring the rising of his anatomy (something she was now very well acquainted with), against her inner thigh, “Enough, Lenin.”

 

He looked, for a moment, genuinely hurt, tears gathering in the corner of his eyes, a stunned and wounded expression on his face, “I’m sorry, Lilee, I…”

 

“Don’t apologize!” she interjected, her hands curling against his shoulders and pushing him down into the carpet, as if to will him back into something he was no longer capable of being.

 

Seeing him there, a pinned butterfly beneath her, something in her, something that had become brittle in recent days, seemed to break entirely.

 

She felt her arms relax, she slumped forward, head resting against his pale shoulder, and felt herself shudder and moan as sobs wracked her still mostly unfamiliar body once again, “Please, Lenin, don’t apologize.”

 

She pulled back, and, without even daring to look at the expression on his face for fear of whatever she might find there, she leaned in and kissed him again, tasting the salt of her own tears on his lips.

 

It wasn’t bitter, nor was it sweet, but all the same she could taste her own agony inside of each drop.

 

He didn’t seem to mind, his arms wrapped up around her once again, moved her in closer, and even as the dance once again started (silently this time and without morbid nineteenth century French poetry to accompany it) she felt at once trapped in her body and ejected from it, watching herself from the outside in even as she was pulled in deeper and deeper to an unfamiliar excitement, to a wanting and a coveting and a brief single flash of receiving, and watching herself and Wizard Lenin outside of all of this.

 

It was at once crude and profound, the summit and pit of mankind, this single, simple, sullied act that was at the heart of human existence.

 

And as Lily the body separated from Lily the soul she wondered to herself what she would do now, even as Wizard Lenin’s pale fingers deftly traced places that had once seemed untouchable and sacred.

 

He should be dead, she should have killed him, he’d all but asked her to kill him should this occur, she had tried to kill him, and it had failed. She didn’t have it in her to kill him again, not when there was something, anything, left of him. He would have understood (no he wouldn’t have).

 

She wasn’t going to kill him, she thought, as Wizard Lenin moved his lips to her neck once again, her eyes fluttering as they took in that dark event horizon that was the ceiling. But what would she do instead?

 

Find Luna, right, Luna and Rabbit, keep an eye on them, make sure it didn’t happen to them and perhaps try to revert Wizard Lenin or Death back somehow and…

 

She had to fix this, she had to find a way to fix this, to revert what had happened and take them all back to the beginning. It wasn’t just the least she could do, it was the necessary, the only thing she could do.

 

With a great cry, and a great blinding shudder of feeling and thought, they were done again, him breathing in the scent of her again, cradling her in his lap and Lily staring past him.

 

“Are you going to de concert?” he asked.

 

“What?” Lily responded, blinking, trying to get her bearings once again now that they seemed to be done.

 

“Das MCR concert, tonight,” he repeated like she was some kind of a half-wit, “You stupid fucker prep.”

 

“Oh, right,” Lily said slowly, “Yes, I, I went to the last one, and it seems the thing to do.”

 

He tilted his head, looked at her, then asked, “You going with anyone?”

 

“Well, Luna and Rabbit,” she said, but Wizard Lenin looked blank, as if he didn’t even recognize the names, Lily grimaced as she moved off him, conjured back her original clothes, her red sweater, shorts, and white sneakers, “And I suppose Ebony, B’loody Mary Smith, Navel, Diabolo, and Vampire if you’re familiar with that crowd.”

 

At that his eyes lit up, he moved forward, completely forgetting about his lack of dress or her own unsatisfying preppy clothing, “You know Enoby?!”

 

“Um, we’re acquainted,” Lily said but that didn’t seem to matter to him at all.

 

“She’s so fucking hot,” he gushed, and it was, gushing, like he was a teenage girl at a Beatles concert back in the 1960s when they had all but fainted when catching the eye of the fabulous four, “Well, her and Draco and Vampire, they’re all fucking hotties. One time, I think I got an erection just looking at them.”

 

He cupped her face in his hands, then said, in words that Wizard Lenin would have died ten thousand times before ever thinking of saying even under torture, “Do you think they’d do a threesome?”

 

Lily said nothing, rather, she felt her stomach plummet but instead of reading her horrified reaction and reacting to it, he was eyeing her, looking at her clothing in annoyance and distaste, and declaring, “I’m going with you, somebody has to make sure you don’t look like a fucking prep, it’s fooking sad.”

 

Suddenly, Lily wasn’t sure how she felt about the prospect of gothic Wizard Lenin hanging around, though she supposed that had been part of the plan, if there had been a plan in her brain at all, “Oh, that’s alright you don’t…”

 

However, he was on a roll, stealing Wizard Lenin’s passion and voice and determination for a goal that Wizard Lenin would have abhorred in every capacity available to him, “And, you’ll introduce me to those Slytherin eye fookable goffs you room with, and we can invite Enoby, or Draco, or Vampire to do it with us.”

 

“Oh, not Draco, please not Draco,” Lily said shaking her head, grimacing as she remembered vividly Draco Malfoy’s lithe pale body in the Potions’ Classroom, then, paling, she said, “And Vampire’s my uncle brother…”

 

However, incest didn’t seem to bother the new and improved goffick version of Wizard Lenin in the slightest. In fact, the forbidden love seemed to make it that much more delicious for him as his eyes sparkled and he stood, in all his naked perfection, and began to hurriedly dress himself and reapply his makeup with a skill that would have been admirable if it wasn’t to apply mascara to his already thickly lashed eyes.

 

Lily stood with a sigh, shoving her hands into her pockets, and wondering why this felt so familiar even as she was soon enough dragged out of the store by an overeager and an overambitious Wizard Lenin with sex and goths on his mind.

 

Maybe because this was the way it had always been, except, he had never been this. Still, here they were, Wizard Lenin and Lily on an adventure once again, Wizard Lenin stating the goal and laying out the plan for Lily to follow.

 

Just, the plan before now had never been ménage à trois with Draco Malfoy… Although that would probably be easier than getting Wizard Lenin a body had been.

 

Outside the sun began to set, casting orange and red shadows onto the snow and the rain, catching in Wizard Lenin’s dark hair as he pulled her along, straightening his own clothing and readjusting himself as he prepared to meet his sexual maker.

 

Lily, for her own part, merely raised her eyebrows and couldn’t help but smile somewhat at his antics, familiar yet not familiar at the same time. More there was… Anticipation in her, a light fluttering in her stomach, as suddenly she seemed intrinsically aware of just how good-looking Wizard Lenin was and always had been, how warm her hand was in his as he pulled her along.

 

They walked in through the gates, Wizard Lenin somehow not stopped despite not being a student, and they climbed the stairs towards the Default common room. There must have been something inside him still, something buried deep, that still knew the way there as he continued to take the lead.

 

Lily would believe that Wizard Lenin was still somewhere in there.

 

However, on reaching the seventh floor, whatever optimism was in Lily died a quick and brutal death.

 

If someone had asked her who, more so even than Draco Malfoy, would she not want to see without pants she would have been hard pressed to come up with an answer. However, now the answer seemed clear, more, she had two answers to give.

 

There, in the hallway right outside the Default dormitory, moaning and rutting against each other, naked as the day they were born into this wretched existence, was none other than Severus Snape straddling a twitching, moaning, Lupin.

 

And Lily standing over them, was on the verge of vomiting.

 

However, it only got worse as Lily realized she and Wizard Lenin weren’t the only ones there.

 

There, watching with unfounded glee as Snape’s hips pounded Lupin into the stone floor, was none other than Dobby the house elf who she’d had a brief unfortunate run in earlier that year. And judging by the lust in his bugged eyes, and the way his knobbed fingers clenched and unclenched, Christmas had come unseasonably early for him.

 

Somehow, glancing towards the doorway and finding a flabbergasted and horrified Ebony there, was the most relieving part of this situation.

 

Ebony was in her usual getup: a black leather miniskirt again, a black corset with purple lace sticking out of all the hems, along with a pair of sizeable black combat boots that would have perhaps seen better days in Vietnam. In other words, some variant of the same damn thing that Ebony Way wore all the damn time, Lily was beginning to think she lacked for creativity as far as clothing was concerned.

 

Complimenting this was black eyeshadow, black lipstick, thick black eyeliner, and white foundation that would once again put a geisha to shame.

 

Wizard Lenin, on seeing her, seemed to pause, his body twisting towards her and his eyes growing large, a hunger growing with them as he took in every glorious goffick detail of her.

 

That was, until he was distracted by Snape and Lupin.

 

“Oh my god, you ludicrous idiots!” Lupin and Snape shouted in tandem as their heads whipped towards Ebony.

 

On being discovered for a voyeur, Dobby stood, and ran away sobbing into his rags that served as clothing, likely the shame of this incident hastening him towards a swift death. Or at least, Lily hoped so, because there were some sights you couldn’t unsee.

 

Snape’s ass would now be haunting her nightmares for the rest of her life.

 

The pair stood, unashamed of their proud erections, testament to the fact that they had been caught in the middle of their festivities in the hallway rather than at the end. Lily blinked, blanched, and tired to look away, turning instead towards Wizard Lenin who looked like he was trying to decide if he was into this or not.

 

Which, there was Draco fucking Malfoy, then there was Snape, clearly, goffick Wizard Lenin needed to remember that standards were something that existed!

 

However, some small smidgeon of Wizard Lenin’s uncorrupted soul must have prevailed because contemptuous disgust won out and he sneered at the sight of them, “Ew, fooking Gryffindor prep sex.”

 

And apparently it was only because Snape had fallen into that mysterious prep category along with whoever the hell Lupin even was… Well, Lily would take what reasoning she could get, they could work on that. At least Wizard Lenin had had the sense to say no.

 

“WTF?! Is that why you wanted condoms?” Ebony asked mockingly, apparently taking great pleasure in watching these two grown sexually aroused men squirm before her… Which was gross imagery that Lily didn’t need to think about despite this very image being right in front of her.

 

There really was no avoiding this one.

 

“Only you wouldn’t give them to me!” Lupin accused, pointing both a finger and his leaking dick towards Ebony.

 

“Well, you should have told me!” Ebony shouted in reply, which… Why would Ebony care who Lupin was having sex with? If Lily had been in her position she’d just tell them not to do it in the goddamn hallway.

 

“You dimwit!” Snape shouted in equal anger, however, whatever was about to follow this was cut off as Ebony dug into her pockets, producing a black camera, and with a single flash took a picture of the pair of them, wide eyed, naked, and very clearly aroused.

 

“Well, excuse me!” The pair shouted in tandem, clearly shocked and appalled by Ebony’s garish behavior, daring to take a photo of their very public act of sexual intercourse, “What was that all about?”

 

“It was to blackmail you!” Ebony insisted with glee, “So next time you see me doing it with my boyfriend you can’t fucking rat me out or I’ll show this to Dumbledork, so fuck off you bastards!”

 

Lily blinked, stared for a moment, then noted, “They were doing it in the hallway! I don’t think they care who walks in on them, clearly!”

 

However, Snape and Lupin seemed genuinely alarmed as Ebony ducked back into the Default common room, slamming the door in their faces as they tried to open it with a fierce desperation. Eventually, the pair gave up, slinking naked and pitiful past Wizard Lenin and Lily and back into the night to continue whatever the hell they had been doing before all of this.

 

Lily stared after them, shuddering, “There are some things in this world I don’t need to see.”

 

However, apparently Wizard Lenin was already over Snape’s middle aged ass and straight back onto the subject of Ebony Way.

 

“Did you see Ebony, she’s so fooking beautiful, I think I love her… We must have sex,” Wizard Lenin said instead, stars and lust somehow both in his eyes as he moved towards the door, before pausing, looking down at himself, “How do I look?”

 

Lily raised her eyebrows as she took him in, his ridiculous expression, the clothing, the thick makeup, “Well, she’ll probably dig it.”

 

However, something in her churned at that, at those words, at the idea of Ebony Way in his embrace the way she’d been only a few hours earlier and…

 

Lily opened the door for the pair of them, watching as Wizard Lenin made a beeline towards Ebony Way, who seemed to be in the process of changing outfits and hairstyles once again. And there, sitting by the fireplace with Rabbit beside her, was Luna, unchanged and unaltered, well, still sixteen or seventeen, but still undeniably Luna Lovegood.

 

“Luna,” Lily said, moving towards her until she was crouching in front of her, staring up into her dazed blue eyes and trying to explain what the hell even had happened in the last few hours, “Sorry I’m late, I… Found the closest approximation to him.”

 

Luna looked over her shoulder, took him in with all his newfound gothic glory, watched as Ebony slapped him across the face and said, “No, you sick perv, I have a boyfriend!”

 

“I see, and perhaps a closest approximation is close enough,” however, Luna seemed doubtful about this, and Lily allowed herself to frown, to take in the shadows beneath Luna’s eyes, the uncertainty in her expression.

 

“I… I couldn’t do it again, I’m not sure I was capable of it the first time,” Lily said slowly, and that, at least Luna appeared to accept. However, a glance at Rabbit, and there was some unnamed terrible truth in his dark eyes, lingering there as he looked across at Wizard Lenin, however it was one Lily was unwilling to contemplate.

 

“Neither of us are leaving again,” Lily stated, “I promise, I will be here until the very end.”

 

As she’d promised Wizard Lenin before even Luna.

 

“Thank you,” Luna breathed out, those having been the words she had somehow been looking for this whole time. Then, head cocked like a little bird, she asked, “Are we going to the concert?”

 

“We’ve been to the last two,” Lily noted, Luna’s lips quirking upwards in response.

 

“Then if you are going with what remains of comrade Lenin I suppose I shall have to accompany comrade Rabbit,” she smiled across at Rabbit who gave no indication of either hearing or understanding, however, this seemed to be enough for Luna.

 

Soon enough they were leaving, Luna’s arm in Rabbit’s, Lily’s in Wizard Lenin’s, and Ebony ahead of them all. Outside it was dark again, no moon in sight, and there Death waited in the guise of Vampire Potter, an inviting smile made towards the group, one that caused Wizard Lenin’s arm to grip hers just a little tighter as his blue eyes carved Vampire into sensual pieces.

 

On seeing him, Ebony stopped, and asked, “WTF, where’s Draco?!”

 

“Oh, he’s being a fucking bastard,” Vampire sniffed in contempt as he shook his head, “He told me he wouldn’t come.”

 

Then, eyeing her, he asked, “You want to come with me to tha concert?”

 

To make the deal a little sweeter another flying car appeared, this one different than Draco’s, likely belonging to her apparently loaded Satanist little brother interpretation of Death. At the sight of it, all black and sleek with the license plate reading MCR666 and ENOBY, Ebony gasped.

 

“My dogfather Sirius gave it to me,” Vampire explained, whatever the hell that was supposed to mean, however it appeared to be enough, all of them cramped in the flying car, Lily forced to practically sit on top of Wizard Lenin who wasn’t quite as put upon as he normally would have been in this situation.

 

Soon enough they were there at the concert once again, which looked the way each and every concert had before it, like it was still only yesterday, or the day before that, or the day before that. As if time itself had simply ceased to exist.

 

_“Long ago, just like the hearse you die to get in again, we are so far from you,”_ the lead singer of the band sang out to the crowd.

 

The music pounded in Lily’s skull, glancing over she watched as teenaged Death in black and red stuffed his tongue into Ebony’s eager mouth as their bodies swayed together, even as Wizard Lenin’s pale hands trailed down Lily’s back and to her waist, skirting like spiders over skin and clothing to seep numbing venom into her blood.

 

_“Burning on just like a match, you strike to incinerate the lives of everyone you know.”_

 

Ebony moaned, great, loud things that sounded even above the band somehow, ringing like the pealing of bells for the funeral of all mankind.

 

_“And what’s the worst you take from every heart you break? And like the blade you stain, well, I’ve been holding on tonight.”_

 

This, Lily thought to herself, without justification or any emotion at all, is a form of hell.

 

_“What’s the worst that I could say? Things are better if I stay. So long and goodnight, so long and goodnight._ ”

 

A great wretched cry sounded, the cry that echoed still within Lily’s own heart and soul even as Wizard Lenin’s spider fingers gripped her waist as he stared in envy and desire upon Death and Ebony, even as Luna and Rabbit beside them slow danced to a waltz that only they could seem to hear in this place, Rabbit’s eyes lingering on Lily so that her form was trapped forever inside them, inside that cold dark abyss that was eating at reality even now.

 

It was a cry that said at once “I am alive” and “I am a human being” while also saying “Life is an agonizing lack of meaning that I must now confront or perish.”

 

Lily turned, slowly, so slowly, and there, staring at Ebony in anguish and betrayal, was none other than the forgotten Draco Malfoy, sobbing as his lover grinded against Death.

 

END OF CHAPTER

 

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	15. Tequila's Darkness and Lenin's Descent

**AN: Fook u, OK, u fucking suck! It’s not ma fault if its spelled wrong, OK? Cause bic Ravan cause it fuck you preps1**

**Woops, sorry Raven, fangs for da help. And The Carnivorous Muffin, fangs for noffin u fooking prep. BTW Transylvania rocks, hurrad1 I even got to go to the caestle were the Drcula was flimmed.**

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**666**

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_In which the new and improved goffick Lenin fails to seduce the pants off Ebony Way and settles for Lily, Luna, and Rabbit, the government finally declares a state of national emergency for entirely wrong reasons, and Wizard Trotsky makes a surprise appearance in the form of Darkness Weasley._

* * *

 

Unsurprisingly, upon returning to the school they found Draco sobbing tears of blood in the Default common room. It seemed the default action for a man of the goffick variety, either they were brooding mysteriously, or they were sobbing with blood running down their faces.

 

However, this seemed to be what Ebony Way desired most in her men, so clearly, they were onto something that Lily herself simply could not comprehend given that Ebony’s affection and sexual attention was a nigh universal goal. In fact, a glance at Wizard Lenin, or rather goffick Lenin, proved that he was very much into sobbing Draco as well and only Lily and Luna were at a loss.

 

Still, it was almost comforting in a way, this small reminder that no matter how unpredictable things were there were still rules. Rules Lily didn’t understand, but then, she had never truly understood the initial rules to start with. People would cry tears of blood, color was considered forbidden and preppy, and there was a fifty percent chance in any given moment that Draco Malfoy was sobbing in a corner and whimpering like a kicked puppy.

 

Ebony, a worried almost compassionate look in her eyes, approached the sobbing Draco and asked in an unusually sultry voice, “Draco, are you okay?”

 

Draco looked towards her in dismay, at Harry Potter standing smugly behind Ebony, and in rage cried out, “No I’m not, you fooking bitch!”

 

Then, before anyone could say anything else, he was running out of the room like a man whose life had lost all meaning entirely, while the rest of them could only watch dumbfounded as the door to the common room slammed behind him.

 

Ebony, then, staring at the door, began to sob herself, a great and terrible fear in her eyes as she bit on her nails and tears of blood began to run down her own pallid features.

 

Lily, glancing at the goffick brain damaged Wizard Lenin who was staring now at Ebony with a look of both wonderment and profound lust, felt the need to explain, “The… crying happens a lot here. You get used to it.”

 

Judging by his expression he did not appreciate her explanation, likely having his own perfectly valid goffick reasoning to explain this behavior, or else unappreciative of Lily’s lack of sympathy in Draco Malfoy’s time of need.

 

“It’s okay, Enoby,” Harry said, wrapping his arms around the sobbing Ebony Way, offering her a sympathetic and comforting smile, “I’ll make him feel better.”

 

Ebony looked up at him aghast and accusing as she came right out and said, “You mean you’ll go fuck him, won’t you?!”

 

Well, she probably wasn’t wrong.

 

Lily grimaced, paled, and tried not to think about that though given everything she’d seen that was undoubtedly Death, Harry, Vampire’s plan. It seemed another newfound law of the universe was that everyone wanted to get into Draco Malfoy or else Ebony Way’s pants.

 

Ebony tore out of the room, slamming the door behind her, leaving Harry to dash after her. And then only Luna, Rabbit, Lily, and a fragment of Wizard Lenin remained.

 

“Fook!” Wizard Lenin shouted, running a hand through his hair, “How am I supposed to fuck them now?!”

 

Both Lily and Luna turned towards him, blinking, Lily feeling her cheeks flush as she realized that she had perhaps been too caught up in the moment earlier. It was still…. Wizard Lenin, of a sort, she wouldn’t deny that. But his new priorities, after the shock of losing her virginity, undergoing a goffick makeover, and seeing him alive and resurrected were far more embarrassing than they’d been initially.

 

“I’m sure they’ll be back, comrade Lenin,” Luna said somewhat hesitantly as she tried to appear sympathetic to Wizard Lenin’s sexual frustration, “Draco, Ebony, and Vampire always spend their time running around the castle for hours on end before they come back to mate for the night.”

 

“What do you know, fooking prep?!” Lenin sneered, causing Luna to blink again and look down at herself, no doubt checking for prep nargles.

 

“Perhaps nothing at all,” Luna finally said, looking somewhat wounded by his accusation as she sat in a chair by the fireplace, “When you put it like that, but certainly no less than anyone else.”

 

Wizard Lenin did not seem to appreciate that, a rather Lenin-like reaction actually, as he instead sauntered over to the fireplace and stared moodily into the flames, “I have never seen a pair so fucking hawt, and they didn’t even look at me.”

 

Lily, feeling as if reality or surreality or whatever this was, was finally catching up to her, also took a seat by the fire place even as she reassured, “Oh, no, Lenin, you’re… very attractive.”

 

This did not seem to reassure him in the slightest as he slumped down further, his back curved as he stared into the flames, his face a pale emotionless mask that sang of a desperate kind of ennui. Lily and Luna spared a glance for one another before looking back at him.

 

“I’m sure that if you really want to have sex with Ebony that…” Lily trailed off, hesitating, and knew that even before she could say the words, tell him to just go for it and ram his tongue down her throat because Ebony seemed to enjoy that, she realized that she didn’t want him to.

 

Wizard Lenin was… Not hers, not exactly, but as close to being hers as any human being was capable of. Even now, especially now damaged as he was, she didn’t want to see the cracks in his exterior grow deeper and darker as Ebony Way got her hands on him.

 

So, she closed her mouth and watched as instead Wizard Lenin sighed, turned back to face his audience members, Luna, Lily, and Rabbit standing like a ghost behind them. He seemed, considering, as he stared over each of them, as if there was a scale in his mind in which he judged each of them, the group of them, against the weight of a feather.

 

Finally, his mouth curled into a slow and seductive smile, the hungry kind he had worn earlier in his store, and like a dread beat his body began to twist itself once again as his arousal made itself very clear, “Well, you’re not not kawaii.”

 

“Oh,” Lily said, her own eyes widening in realization, and then looking at the other two in the room she concluded, “Oh, hell.”

 

“Captain,” Luna asked, turning to look at Lily, a spark in her pale blue eyes, “What is he…”

 

Well, how did she put that? Lily cleared her throat, hesitated, then asked, “Well, Luna, have you ever wanted to lose your virginity to a gothic, older, lipstick wearing version of Lenin?”

 

“I can’t say I’ve thought of it,” Luna said, her face paling and eyes widening, then face flushing as she looked back towards sexy gothic Wizard Lenin who was now sultrily stalking towards them with all the grace of a jungle cat.

 

“Well, congratulations,” Lily said as Wizard Lenin silently perched himself on the arm of her chair, reaching out to tilt her jaw towards him, “This is your chance to find out.”

 

“Oh, but, I…” Luna’s eyes widened as she watched Wizard Lenin proceed to move his teeth to Lily’s pale neck like a grazing antelope, “This is all very sudden.”

 

“… Yes, sex seems to be very sudden and very frequent in this alternate reality we’ve found ourselves in,” Lily couldn’t help but agree, her own face flushing, wondering if now was the time to say no and if Wizard Lenin was even capable of understanding such actions anymore.

 

She wasn’t honestly sure, given the way Death acted around Ebony… She didn’t know what it would take to get him to stop.

 

“For an automaton you give him far too many liberties.”

 

Lily whirled, knocking Wizard Lenin from the chair as Rabbit stood, whispering in her ear out of nowhere, and looking down at her with those fathomless eyes.

 

“Holy shit Christ!” Lily cried out, nearly toppling out of the chair herself.

 

Meanwhile, an affronted and embarrassed goffick Lenin rubbed at his back as he shouted, “WTF?! Are you some kind of Christina?”

 

Rabbit looked entirely blank at that, staring at what remained of Wizard Lenin, before saying dully in his usual polite and unemotional tone, “I have certainty, not faith, I lack religion.”

 

Wizard Lenin stood and for a moment resembled himself more than he ever had, because rage burned through him, burned through the clothes and makeup he had adorned himself in and bled through to the core of what he was and always had been. Then, he lunged forward and threw Rabbit to the ground, kissing him furiously as Rabbit lay there, practically catatonic even as Wizard Lenin’s pale fingers began to slip up beneath Rabbit’s shirt.

 

And Lily was left, once again, in the very awkward position as Wizard Lenin removed Rabbit’s shirt, of whether or not she should intervene before… Well…

 

Before the brain damaged remains of Wizard Lenin raped Rabbit.

 

Rabbit stared up at Wizard Lenin not… not balefully, but with a certain shadow of contempt in his eyes, as if even lying perfectly still and tranquil beneath this altered Lenin, he could stare down upon him in judgement and find him entirely lacking.

 

Meanwhile, the dark clad Lenin moved with a desperate enthusiasm, hands wandering and hips gyrating, searching for something in Rabbit’s pale skin as he had Lily’s earlier…

 

“Lenin,” Lily said, reaching over and grabbing one of his hands in hers, stopping it from tracing Rabbit’s jaw or else running down his chest, smiling down at him with such sweet sorrow, “I think that’s enough.”

 

Tears gathered at the corners of his eyes as he looked up at her, and for a moment, she thought he understood perfectly what had happened.

 

“Why?” he asked, staring up at her, and there was no condemnation, no accusation, no hint of Lily’s own failure to prevent this only… Only that sorrowful, agonizing, desperation of a man who had once been more than this but could no longer remember the difference.

 

She pulled him up, slung her arm around him and ushered him towards her own bed, “Come on, it’s been a long night.”

 

She helped him out of his shirt, looked away as he removed his pants and left only his boxers, and looking back, his face wiped clean of makeup once again he looked… He looked so young, so tired, so terribly frightened and overwhelmed underneath her covers.

 

She took his hand in hers, squeezed it, and repeated her promise, the one he could likely no longer remember, “I’ll be here, Lenin, until the very end.”

 

Things wound down soon enough after that, Luna returned to her bed, Rabbit perched upon his, watching Lily as she lay curled in Wizard Lenin’s arms throughout the night, not even blinking at the sight of Draco Malfoy and Ebony Way as they returned devouring each other’s tongues until they tumbled into her coffin undoubtedly to continue their night of sexual bliss.

 

Wizard Lenin, for his own part, though barely clothed and clearly reacting to her presence made no move towards her or anyone else. He just held her, staring forward until his eyes finally closed, holding her tighter as the nightmares of lives he once lived descended upon him.

 

Thus, it was to the sight of Ebony Way in black, laced, leather pajamas, that Lily woke to the next day. Well, not just that, the whole goffick crew had apparently decided to make an appearance and barge into the Default common room at an ungodly hour in the morning.

 

Bloody Hermione, Death the Vampire, Ron el Diabolo, Draco, Navel Dracula, and that new girl whose name Lily still hadn’t somehow learned all stared down at Ebony in anticipation, each, of course, decked out to the gothic nines.

 

New girl was wearing an absurdly tight leather top with pictures of blood red roses all over it, this was matched with an absurd black fluffy skirt covered in lace that should have died a death in the Victorian age, and absurdly high black boots.

 

Death, in the form of Harry Vampire Potter, was wearing a baggy t-shirt proclaiming “Simple Plan” on the front, equally baggy black pants of the kind that decorated Tom Rid’s store, and a pair of stylish black skater shoes.

 

Draco, not to be outdone, was wearing a black t-shirt proclaiming “MCR” on the front, a pair of black jeans, and a leather jacket to give him the hardened edge and sex appeal that he didn’t deserve and didn’t pull off.

 

B’loody Mary Hermione had decided to go with an absurdly tight, far too small, black dress with a gaping triangle missing from the front to make the most of her now impressive cleavage.

 

And then, Lily’s eyes, almost unwillingly, fell to the newest member of the group, and she was immediately awake, bolting upright as she took in none other than Ginny Margaritaville Weasley’s newly goffick features, “Oh, fuck, Tequila!”

 

Oh, she should have seen it coming, perhaps she had seen it coming, but it was a shock none the less as Tequila was not only in her common room, but was also in it wearing a ripped black dress, a laced up corset, and a pair of truly terrifying black stiletto heels.

 

Lily could feel herself foaming at the mouth, the horror practically choking her physically, as gothic Lenin put a comforting (but ultimately useless) hand on her shoulders as all of Lily’s greatest nightmares descended upon her.

 

Tequila sneered, except… No, it wasn’t the flat sneer of usual, Tequila seemed just as alcoholic and unbearable as ever as she looked at Lily, in fact she looked downright wry as she said, “It’s Darkness now, Lily.”

 

She then motioned behind her to where… Crabbe and Goyle of all people, were lumbering like large gothic versions of their silent selves, behind her, “I’m sure you’ve met my brothers, Crabbe, Goyle, and Diablo…”

 

“Diabolo!” Ron el Diablo corrected harshly only for Darkness Tequila Weasley to offer him a blandly polite smile as she continued.

 

“Right, well, it turns out our father was a vampire,” and suddenly Lily knew exactly where this was going, as it had gone in the same direction with both Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom, “He committed suicide by slitting his wrists with a razor. Oh, yes, he also raped us, apparently. Afterwards, naturally, in a fit of depression, we converted to Satanism.”

 

Lily wanted to hide back underneath he covers and pretend this was not happening, but it was happening, worse, looking at Darkness Ginny Tequila Weasley she was suddenly realizing that though Ginny was talking the talk and walking the walk she retained that spark of intelligence in her eyes.

 

Ginny was not truly Darkness.

 

And of all the people to survive the transition, to hide in plain sight, why, oh god why, did it have to be her?

 

And, with Wizard Lenin’s arms around her, Lily couldn’t help a burning sensation, a bitter cold stone in her heart and a wish that it could be Ginny who had taken his place.

 

“OMFG!” Ebony cried as she approached the hoard of very unwelcome guests, “Why the fuck are you all here?!”

 

“Enoby,” Draco said, hands out towards her as he tried to calm her down, “Something is really fucked up.”

 

Well that was the understatement of the century, and hadn’t Lily been crying that for days now? If not weeks? The days themselves were starting to blur together and it was hard to tell exactly when this farce had started.

 

“Okay,” Ebony said as she moved back towards her trunk with angry determination, “But I need to put my fucking clothes on first!”

 

“It’s alright,” Draco assured in a sultry voice that he probably imagined would have women panting after him, “We have to go now, and you look kawaii anyway, you’re so fucking beautiful.”

 

That seemed to be enough as Ebony relented with a smile, “Oh, alright, but you have to tell me why you’re being all erective.”

 

Lily choked on her spit, worse, she could see Ginny the Darkness having difficulty schooling her own expression, a clear sign that she was in the know when even Wizard Lenin did not tense behind her.

 

“I will, I will,” Draco assured once again, waiting as Ebony put on emergency makeup to match her ridiculous leather outfit, and while Lily and Luna dressed like normal people.

“So, captain, are we going?” Luna asked.

 

“Well, I don’t think we have anything better to do,” Lily stated, before motioning towards Wizard Lenin, “Besides, I can’t leave him to his own devices right now and I don’t really feel like dragging him to class.”

 

Not that anyone would notice anyway, for that matter, Lily wasn’t even sure if classes still happened. They seemed to be an off and on-again occurrence for whenever a concert wasn’t happening in Hogsmeade.

 

More…

 

Lily caught Ginny’s eyes, Ginny offering her a slow and sinister smile, yes… Though Lily hated the very idea of it, perhaps it was time to have a word with Tequila.

 

So, the goffick mob, plus Wizard Lenin, Lily, Luna, and Rabbit, descended down towards the Great Hall, Tequila awkwardly lingering so that she was only just in front of Lily and the rest of the preptastic gang.

 

“Sorry about your father,” Lily said, eventually, to which Ginny merely raised her eyebrows.

“Oh, yes, thank you, Lily,” Tequila said with a polite and appreciative smile, before adding, “The trouble is I only just found out about it myself.”

 

“Huh?” Lily asked, not too eloquently.

 

Tequila shrugged while she explained, “Well, one morning I’m eleven-year-old Ginny Weasley, the youngest of seven children, only daughter, relatively ignored by her younger brothers and Ellie Potter hero-worshipper, the next I’m sixteen-year-old Satanist gothic Darkness Weasley, sister to Ron Diabolo Weasley, and of course Crabbe and Goyle.”

 

“But you’re still…” Lily trailed off, trying to think of the words to say, while Ginny merely raised her eyebrows.

 

“Oh, Ginny Weasley is long gone, if that’s what you mean,” Ginny said with a bright smile, “But then, Ginny hasn’t been at the wheel for a while now.”

 

Ginny then spared a glance for Wizard Lenin, now talking with Luna and trying to explain to her why she was a stupid prep, and in a voice laced with dark irony said, “And I don’t think I have ever been more grateful for that fact. After all, that could have just as easily been me.”

 

And suddenly, far too late, it began to click together, “You’re…”

 

“Neither here nor there,” Ginny interrupted, “Wouldn’t you say, Lily, that we have bigger problems?”

 

Before Lily could say anything, could say out loud that whoever was driving Ginny’s body was the heir of Slytherin, not Hindenburg but instead some third factor of Wizard Lenin’s original soul, Ginny’s face brightened, and she declared with unguarded excitement, “Oh look, it’s Brittany, oh god I love Brittany!”

 

There, to their right, just outside of the Great Hall was a rather attractive blonde and blue-eyed girl, wearing a Gryffindor tie, a pink miniskirt, and a t-shirt proclaiming her love of someone named Hilary Duff.

 

“Burn in hell, Brittany!” Ginny cried out in glee as she used magic to throw Brittany into the nearest wall, the rest of the goffick cohorts laughing at the sight and raising their middle fingers to the poor girl now crying as she picked herself up off the floor.

 

At Lily’s horrified look Ginny explained, “You can do anything you want to Brittany, a stupid Gryffindor prep fucker, and get away with it. It’s hilarious.”

 

Lily only stared, felt herself burning, and asked, “And this, this is your goal?”

 

“Well, not particularly, but one must make do with one’s conditions, Lily,” Ginny proclaimed, “And if Brittany offers me a little relief from the degradation of Hogwarts, I dare say I’ll take it.”

 

There was a thought there, that surely, Lily herself could appreciate that in some respects. Lily said nothing though, lost the chance as they approached the entrance to the Great Hall and made out Dumbledore arguing with the suddenly female minister of magic Cornelius Fudge (who she had sworn was recently a man) as well as a strangely toad like woman dressed in pink.

 

It seemed, finally, the ministry had decided to do something.

 

“This cannot be,” the minister barked furiously, “The school must be closed! The bark lord is planning to kill the students!”

 

Except the ministry had decided to do something about the heir of Slytherin, who hadn’t been acting up in weeks, and apparently was more than happy to possess Darkness Weasley. Or else Hindenburg himself they were talking about, who was likely having bondage sex in drag with some hapless victim and not even thinking about slaughtering students.

 

Lily felt whatever respect she had for the ministry diminish. More, it seemed the disease had spread far beyond Hogwarts’ borders, if it had gotten to the head of the government.

 

Even leaving Hogwarts, it seemed, was not a solution.

 

“You are not fit to be the principal any longer!” yelled the toad woman, ganging up on Dumbledore and jabbing a stubby finger in his face, “You are too old, and your Alzheimer’s is dangerous! You must retry or Voldemort will kill your students!”

 

“Very well,” Dumbledore conceded before a sharp spark entered his blue eyes, “But we cannot do this, we can’t close the school.”

 

Instead, he turned, looked towards the goffick crew, not at Lily, but straight at Ebony Way, “There’s only one person capable of killing Voldemort, and she is in the school. And her name is…”

 

He paused dramatically while Lily slowly, so slowly, turned her head towards Ebony.

 

“Enony Darkness Dementia Raven Way!”

 

Ebony gasped.

 

END OF CHAPTER

 

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	16. Hiding in Plain Sight

**AN: Dhot the fuck up beakers1 Your just jealous cause I got 10,000 reviows1 Fangs to Raven for the help n tell me bout the box grl u rock let’s go shopping together. And The Carnivorous Muffin is a shroopid prep with only 300 reviows.**

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_In which Lily finally has her first real glimpse of the man behind Darkness Weasley’s mask, Ebony Way suffers either from frequent epileptic seizures or else prophetic visions, and Voldemort reminds everyone that he still exists and he still loves flying in on broomsticks unannounced._

* * *

 

 

As with most dramatic announcements or revelations that had occurred since Hogwarts’ descent into goffism, after Dumbledore declared Ebony to be the savior of Britain (even with Lily standing right next to her), no one seemed to react at all. It was like the moment never happened, they were all just sort of standing around, watching as the minister stomped out of the Great Hall like Ebony Way in the midst of a sexually frustrated fit.

 

This led to the pink toad woman turning her attention on the gang, and of course, on Ebony Way herself, “Mr. Way, what the beep are you doing?!”

 

Goffick Dumbledore, not one to take this lightly, glared at her then smiled with false cheer towards the goffick mob of students, “Oops, she made a mistake, she means everybody come in.”

 

And then there was little left to do but shuffle into the Great Hall en masse and find their seats, the goffick Lenin sitting on one side of her while his other half possessing Darkness Weasley sat on the other (who Lily, in the meantime, had decided to name Wizard Trotsky if only because she was fairly certain he was the horcrux that Wizard Lenin would have gladly seen with an ice pick lodged in the back of his head).  If this was a little awkward, which it certainly was as Wizard Trotsky the Darkness made no pretense of not staring at her in a manner that was all too reminiscent of lust crazed Wizard Lenin or any of their other goffick peers, then it was nothing compared to Ebony Way’s dilemma.

 

Draco was seated on Ebony’s right-hand side while Wizard Trotsky the Darkness was on her left, across from her was B’loody Hermione Queen of Goffs, which left Death to stand like an ominous shadow behind her glaring down upon Draco Malfoy with unholy wrath in his falsely crimson eyes while Ebony, oblivious, ate her afterbirth carnage of Count Chocula cereal mixed with blood.

 

Attempting to alleviate some of the tension, or else opening their mouths oblivious to the tension, goffick Crabbe and Goyle were partaking in a round of morbid subpar jokes. Although, Lily supposed this wasn’t much different than their usual displays of sentience, which had always been subpar even before The Gothening.

 

“Hey, Crabbe, what do you call Loopin when he’s fucking your dead mother’s neck?” goffick robot minion one asked goffick robot minion two.

 

“I don’t know, Goyle,” goffick robot minion two responded with a smile that was likely supposed to be devilish but just came out kind of weird looking.

 

“A neckpheliac,” both goffick robot minions then burst into hearty laughter at the idea of homeless Magoo having sexual intercourse with their dead mother. Who, given the pattern thus far, was likely a vampire.

 

Lily placed a hand against her forehead, feeling a headache coming on and wondering how exactly she was supposed to be feeling right now. She wasn’t… it had been worse earlier, and everything was still heavier than usual, but something, perhaps Wizard Lenin or Wizard Trotsky’s reveal was distracting her from the ever-crushing weight that was reality. Or, she thought as her eyes slid to Ginny Darkness Tequila Weasley, perhaps it was because there was something of a hint of where to go from here.

 

Wizard Trotsky had somehow escaped the purge when Wizard Lenin hadn’t. Even if England itself had succumbed to goffism, that, itself, had to be a sign that it was not inescapable. More, perhaps, perhaps with his help in the place of Wizard Lenin’s, they could find out how to reverse the process.

 

For Wizard Lenin and Death at any rate if not all of mankind.

 

Before she could open her mouth though, Death was shouting at Draco.

 

“You fucking bitch!” he cried out, genuine rage in his eyes as he looked down at Draco Malfoy seated next to Ebony Way.

 

“Who are you calling a fucking bitch, bastard?” Draco cried back, turning his head to look at Death, seemingly unconcerned by the difference in power (though Death, on this plane, in this form, was always so terribly diminished, so small, compared to all that he had once been).

 

Ebony turned her head, her face one of confusion as she asked the pair of them, “Vampire, Draco, what the fuck?”

 

“You fucking bustard!” Draco yelled up at Death, going so far as to stand and push him backwards, and with the seat open Wizard Lenin spared Lily a glance, then quickly, with all the speed and stealth of a sex deprived ninja, slid into the open seat next to Ebony Way (who at this point had her mouth gaping open as she watched what looked like the beginnings of a fist fight between Draco Malfoy and none other than vampiric Death).

 

Then Draco added, “I want to shit next to her!”

 

Lily hoped he meant sit, but honestly, she was no longer sure.

 

Lily gaped while next to her Wizard Trotsky the alcoholic darkness stifled a snort and attempted to look very serious. Meanwhile, on the other side of Ebony Way, goffick Lenin was taking advantage of his position by getting a tad handsy as one of his pale hands landed softly on her bare thigh.

 

Death, shoving Draco back harder, almost into the table, retorted, “No, I do!”

 

And Draco was shoving Death back even harder than that, almost forcing him down onto the floor as he shouted, “No, she doesn’t fucking like you, you son of a bitch!”

 

“No, fuck you motherfucker!” Death cried as he threw the first punch, landing right against Draco’s jaw and causing him to stumble backwards, much to Ebony’s horror and the gasping of the general audience, well, except for Darkness Weasley, who had begun to break into hysterical laughter, “She laves me, not you!”

 

Then with an even greater cry, teenaged Death threw Draco Malfoy to the floor, and proceeded to rain fists down upon his pale and angular face as he began the process of beating him half to death. Draco Malfoy tried to claw at him, bite, and return punches of his own, but was in a much worse position and soon his eyes were swelling, and blood was pouring from his nose.

 

“Stop, you ludicrous fools!” Dumbledore cried out, but there was no stopping them, and watching, for a moment, Lily wondered if Death really would kill Draco.

 

There was… She’d never seen that expression in his eyes, rage, jealousy, depression, a bitter human desperation that he had always seemed so very removed from as if this was his final cry of life before descending into nonexistence.

 

Every once in a while, a horrifying spark of Death remained in Harry Potter, a sign that deep in there he was still there, still capable of being himself in the barest of senses.

 

Ebony meanwhile, was slapping Wizard Lenin and shoving him off the bench, calling him a sick perv who dared defile her while her boyfriend Draco was approaching death on the floor of the Great Hall.

 

Before any of this could truly come to a head though everyone turned, as if on instinct, to watch as the man Lily would have never expected flew in through the window on a broomstick of all things.

 

There, dressed in drab gray robes, staring down at them with strangely crimson eyes, was the Wizard Lenin who was not Wizard Lenin at all, but rather, the goffick Hindenburg. Because at this point why wouldn’t Wizard Lenin’s better half show up?

 

The glass of the windows shattered, and like small shooting starts the crashed down onto the earth, tinkling as they went. Lily clamored to her feet, preparing herself instinctually for the fight she had started with Quirrell and would now likely have to finish, her heart thrumming in her ears. There was screaming, at the Gryffindor table the poor girl Brittany began to cry in terror.

 

Death climbed off Draco, allowing him to scramble to his feet, as they all gaped in terror of the man descending upon them as an eerie silence overtook the room.

 

“Eboby,” Hindenburg started, somehow lisping without s’s even being in the word, “Ebony, thou half failed your mission! Now, I shall kill thou and I shall kill Vampire as well!”

 

Then, pointing his wand down at Ebony, it glowing green at the tip and lighting his angelic face in an eerie glow, he declared, “If thou does not kill him before then I shall kill Draco too!”

 

And Lily, abruptly realized, that apparently Hindenburg no longer gave a shit about her at all. She relaxed her position, sat back down, truly stumped as she realized that she had been effectively written out of this story in one way or another. Now, for whatever reason, it was up to Ebony and Lily could… Do whatever normal people did whenever Voldemort came around slaying everybody.

 

She had no idea what normal people did in this kind of situation.

 

Either way, for a moment, staring up at him, at this scene taking place, she wondered if she had ceased to be Eleanor Lily Potter altogether.

 

Ebony, meanwhile, fell to her knees and begged, “Please, don’t make me kill him, please!”

 

“No!” Hindenburg laughed, and it was a strangely crude sound, as if the very noise of it was an offense to her eardrums, a sound that should not be uttered, “Kill him, or I shall kill him anyway!”

 

And just like that, with no regard for Lily or even Wizard Lenin, he flew out of the broken window and back into the midmorning sleet, cackling like the Wicked Witch of the west as he went, while Ebony, still on her knees, began to sob once again.

 

Draco and Vampire, Draco still bleeding profusely, went towards her and began to put their arms around her in comfort. At least, until Ebony’s eyes rolled up into the back of her head, she fell backwards, and began to convulse uncontrollably.

 

“No!” the unconscious, seizing, Ebony cried out in a voice that was still somehow sultry, and then just like that it was done, she was blinking up at Draco and Death, reaching out towards them.

 

“Ebony, Ebony!” Draco asked, “A are you alright?”

 

Ebony got to her feet, brushing off her knees, and responded, “Yeah, yeah.”

 

“Everything’s alright, Enoby,” Death chimed in, reaching out towards her and placing a sensitive hand on her forearm.

 

Ebony ripped her arm away, backing away from him as she shook her head, tears of blood now trickling down her face once again, “No it’s not!”

 

Then, with a look of horror, she asked, clutching at her hair, “OMFG! What if I’m getting all possessed like in tha Ring Two?!”

 

“You mean the Exorcist,” Lily chimed in, but apparently that wasn’t quite goffick enough or Lily was such a non-entity at this point that no one paid her any mind at all.

 

“It’s okay girl,” Hermione the goff chimed in instead, “Maybe you should ask professor Sinister about what divisions mean though.”

 

With a sigh Ebony nodded, wiping away her tears, and said, “Okay bic.”

 

And just like that, they were all walking away towards their next class, leaving Lily, Luna, Rabbit, Wizard Lenin, and now Darkness Weasley behind.

 

“What the hell just happened?” Lily finally asked, and indeed, staring out at the Great Hall, now empty of any goths and slowly emptying itself of the preppy Hogwarts population, she was beginning to wonder if she’d just witnessed any of that at all.

 

It all seemed a bit surreal.

 

“Well, I believe the brain worms may have gotten to the dark lord amongst other things,” Wizard Trotsky said after a length of time, curiously at ease with this fact, as if it had nothing at all to do with him, “Honestly, I’ve learned to just stop questioning things when they happen, it has made my life so much easier in the past few weeks.”

 

“You mean the nargles,” Luna said, a bit distantly herself, likely never having seen this extent of nargling before today.

 

“Sure, why not?” Wizard Trotsky said after a moment, “So, are we going to Divination?”

 

“To what?” Lily had no idea what he was talking about, but then, that probably shouldn’t be surprising.

 

Tequila was barely listening though, correcting herself, or himself, or itself, or whatever the hell they were, “Sorry, Deviation. I’ve found… it’s better to go with the flow, here, to be opposition well… You saw what happened to him.”

 

He motioned to Wizard Lenin, now pouting at the floor no doubt sexually frustrated once again, though also likely referring to the dark lord that had come and gone again like a tornado, threatening death once again upon Draco Malfoy of all people. Death she could sort of understand, that was kind of Wizard Lenin’s modus operandi, but Draco Malfoy?

 

“Sure,” Lily said before nodding at Luna, “Luna, you and Rabbit better come along too, this is the part in the horror film where splitting up leads to our eventual deaths.”

 

Well, they’d already reached that point, and it hadn’t turned out well, but at this point if the dotty dreamer went off on her own she was liable to be eaten next leaving Lily as the resident Ripley and Rabbit as… The Rabbit.

 

So, they made their way up the stairs again, Darkness leading the way and explaining, “Now, you’re probably wondering what I’m doing inside of Ginny or else Darkness Weasley or Hogwarts, and that’s something of a long story, Lily. Normally I wouldn’t tell it, especially to you Miss Lovegood, no offense, but with things going haywire and people disappearing left and right I’ve found myself in a bit of a pickle.”

 

“I think we have time,” Lily finally said, and he smiled back at her, a fond amused thing that should have been impossible beneath the force of Lily’s own glare, before looking forward once again.

He didn’t respond for a moment, until finally, casually, as if his words meant nothing in the world, he said, “The long and short of it was that Ginny Weasley and I made a bargain, one she did not… realize the full implications of. More, I needed a way to blend in, and a reason for little girls to start disappearing. So, as you’ve no doubt surmised…”

 

And suddenly Lily was wondering just what was supposed to have happened to Ginny Weasley, whoever the girl had been before all of this, after Wizard Trotsky was through with her. Nothing good she suspected, nothing good at all.

 

How the times had changed though, that she and the heir of Slytherin could walk side by side in a hallway and think nothing of it.

 

“You’re the heir, the heir inside of Ginny! You opened the chamber!” Luna cried out, putting two and two together.

 

“Bingo,” Wizard Trotsky said as if this was positively adorable of Luna and not a threat to himself whatsoever, “However, recently, I began to notice that no one seemed capable of noticing anything anymore. More, students were already disappearing daily, and no one was batting an eyelash, I didn’t need the chamber anymore.”

 

He sighed then and motioned to himself, “Then… this happened. Suddenly, I’m not Ginny Weasley anymore, but Darkness, and everything she knew or cared about changed and she’s barely a person at all. Certainly not in any condition to stand against me. However, to leave her now and venture out here…”

 

His eyes strayed to Wizard Lenin, walking with both panache and drama down the hallway, as if it was his own personal runway.

 

“Right, well, anyway, here we are,” Tequila motioned to the room pushing them inside and guiding them to a table relatively close to Ebony and company, pale hands lingering on Lily’s shoulders for a tad too long of a moment before she took her own seat, “Also, a note, I believe she used to be Professor Trelawny but has since been merged together with Professor Sinastra. So, she is either, at any given time, Professor Sinister or Trevoli. Try not to pay it too much mind.”

 

“Konichiwa, everybody, come in,” the professor said, motioning in the students to sit at their various tables featuring skulls, crystal balls, voodoo dolls, and jars filled with blood. Lily blanched at the sight of them wondering exactly what kind of shenanigans Deviations entailed.

 

… Lily dearly hoped it wasn’t short for sexual deviations.

 

On the black painted walls were posters of someone called “Emily the Strong”.

 

The woman herself had clearly been consumed by the gothic virus, not only was she sporting black lipstick, black hair dyed red at the ends, and blood red eyes, but was also wearing a black leather top with red lace and a long-ripped dress beneath this.

 

Lily wondered why these people had such a variety of ripped clothing, you’d think they’d run out of ideas after the third or fourth iteration.

 

Beaming at her students, she provided exposition for herself as everyone else Lily had met had thus far, “My name is Professor Trevoli, my mom was a vampire and I’m also half Japanese, so I speak it and everything. Me and B’loody Mary get along great and I’m really young for a teacher.”

 

“She’s so fucking cool,” the goffick Lenin whispered into Lily’s ear, because apparently having a vampire parent was all the rage these days.

 

Indeed, a glance at the goffick Default table showed B’loody Hermione and Ebony looking up with awe at the woman, as if she was Jesus incarnate or at the very least the most influential professor they’d ever had in their lives.

 

Before they could get started on anything meaningful, Ebony raised her hand high into the air, the professor looking at her hand and asking, “What is it, Ebony?”

 

She then peered closer at Ebony’s hands, noticed the oddly intricate painted nails featuring pentagrams, and exclaimed, “Hey, I love your nail polish, where’d you get it, Hot Topic?”

 

“Yeah!” Ebony answered before almost automatically flipping the bird to the confused faces of those wearing pastel and pink who dared not know of the glory of Hot Topic. Then, as if she’d never been diverted, Ebony continued, “Well, I have to talk to you about some things. When do you want to do it?”

 

“How about now?” the professor asked, apparently completely unconcerned that class had just started and they hadn’t done anything yet.

 

But that seemed more than fine with Ebony as she agreed, “Okay.”

 

“Okay,” the professor turned to the rest of them, staring in confusion at her, waiting for the actual class to start, “Class fucking dismissed, everyone!”

 

She then pointed an accusing finger straight at Brittany, the laughing stock of the universe’s joke, “Except for you, Brittany! Please do exorcise one on page three!”

 

And just like that, they were thrown out of the classroom and left to their own devices once again, Lily not even sure there was a schedule anymore. She looked to her left, looked to her right, well, Luna and Rabbit were still there, as was Ginny and what was left of Wizard Lenin so…

 

All was well that ended well, she guessed.

 

Still, “Was that it?”

 

“You don’t think this is a school, do you?” Wizard Trotsky asked through Ginny’s voice, eyebrows raising, and in that moment, there was more than a hint of the old Wizard Lenin in him, and she could see the family resemblance, and yearn for it desperately.

 

“Right, well…” Lily trailed off, eyes hardening, realizing that Luna at least was looking up at her was some desperate hope, looking to make Lily somehow fix the world when Lily still wasn’t sure it was possible, “Trotsky, do you have a spare moment? I think it’s time that the survivors of The Gothening plan for the worst.”

 

“Am I Trotsky?” Tequila asked, pointing to herself before sighing and admitting defeat far easier than even Wizard Lenin initially had, “Oh, alright, it’s better than Darkness.”

 

The walk back to the Default Common room was filled with inane chatter on goffick Lenin’s end as he tried to convince them all of how sexy Draco, Death, and Ebony were and how dearly he wanted to sleep with all of them. That seemed all he was capable these days, thoughts of sex, except…

 

Except sometimes there seemed to be more of that, even in him, even in his darkest moments.

 

Either way, it felt like too long of a time until they were all situated in the common room, Luna and Lily in chairs while Wizard Trotsky lounged like a dominatrix on Lily’s bed, looking across at her almost sultrily without even the excuse of goffickness to guide her actions.

 

Suddenly, Lily was very concerned about Tequila, and more than aware that Lily was now of an age where sex was perfectly legal.

 

“Right, so, Trotsky, how’d you escape?”

 

“I didn’t,” he said bluntly through Ginny’s lips, “Ginny Weasley certainly doesn’t exist anymore, but it changed her, not me. I don’t think I’m supposed to be here, in this world at least, so I have been overlooked.”

 

He then looked at the three of them, taking them in piece by piece, “I wonder if it isn’t the same for you, because, for whatever reason, you lack some fundamental importance or quality you have been overlooked. Play your part, play along, and you may be passed over.”  


“Play along?”

 

Wizard Trotsky motioned to himself, to the curve of Ginny’s breasts and her ripped outfit, “Surely, you don’t think I’m wearing this for fun, do you?”

 

He pointed to them, “You’re still dressed as other, right now, that’s very dangerous. One is either a prep or a goth, and if you don’t look the part it will force you into one, and without any warning at that.”

 

Lily looked down at herself, sporting her usual clothes once again and Luna her own brand of exotic wear, “You’re not suggesting we…”

 

“He’s right, you do look like fooking preps,” Wizard Lenin sneered, “It’s fucking disgusting.”

 

“I am suggesting, you survive,” Wizard Trotsky said, completely ignoring Wizard Lenin as he moved forward to take Lily’s hands in his, as warm as Wizard Lenin’s had been, “I would be very put out if you ceased to exist, Lily. In fact, I might not be able to bear it.”

 

Then, leaning forward, whispering in her ear, he said, “Play along.”

 

Play along, yes, perhaps it was as simple as that, because Wizard Lenin would never have played along and he died for it. Or… no, no he hadn’t seen it coming at all but even so, perhaps, if they had tried to blend in, to hide amongst the victims, he could have lived.

 

Only…

 

“How does that help him now?”

 

“Him,” Wizard Trotsky said, Ginny’s voice strangely imperious with his using it, “Why I can’t say it helps him at all.”

 

He then shrugged and noted, “I’m not sure there’s any coming back from it, to be honest, I have yet to see it done.”

 

“And if we kill the source?” Lily asked, leaning forward, “If we find whoever’s responsible and…”

 

“What source?” he asked, cutting her off, “You mean Ebony Way, is she really the source? Is it your twin Vampire Potter or else Draco Malfoy? And even so, what death? Draco Malfoy has died once as far as I know and he’s safe, sound, and sexually active as ever. Death, Lily, as a concept has ceased to exist.”

 

“There has to be a way to reverse it!” Lily cried out and he looked at her, through Ginny Weasley’s eyes, and he pitied, just as Luna looked and pitied, and even Wizard Lenin, to all the extent he was capable, looked at her and pitied.

 

Feeling the determination, the spark, fly out of her Lily sat back in her chair. All the weight of the world crushing down upon her shoulders as she stared at the carpet and thought of merely blending in and biding time…

 

Perhaps it was for the best then that Death dashed into the room, a strange portable phone in his hand ringing to some strange rock song she’d never heard of, _“I’m tired of being what you want me to be, feeling so faithless, lost under the surface. Don’t know what you’re expecting of me, put under pressure of walking in your shoes.”_

 

(And she was, Lily was so very very tired these days and without any faith at all…)

 

He then looked at them, crimson eyes wide as he declared, “We have to go, Ebony’s called, she said it’s about Sirius and Lucien!”

 

END OF CHAPTER

 

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	17. Snape's Lithe Pale Tattooed Penis

**AN: Aey deecide to puut this on my new accunt as fanfr deletted the over version. This was written too years ago whi Raven was still aliv. So I had a good prodr so this story is dedicatted to you Raven. I’m sorry that I was so men to you all those years. I’m truly sorry11**

**This is a poam that I’ve written for you:**

**Immortal Goffick**

**Lonely as they may be**

**Come to me hn**

**Another lif, for il de sun**

**Cuz you nid her, aey m nit der**

**May we be dems of immortal goffick**

**To all dose flamers, you fooking sooked! You complanned about how ma story sucked, you will suck even more! If you hat dis fic then fuck off111 Fangs to The Carnivorous Muffin, for stilin da fic and posting authors notes oot of order. That meant alt to me.**

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**666**

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_In which Ebony finally produces that pornographic sex tape, Snape gets high on torture, Wizard Trotsky impersonates Henry Higgins, and Lily has no idea what in blazes is even going on anymore._

* * *

 

 

If someone had told Lily, a few months ago, that she’d be dressed as a monochromatic whore with her face plastered in makeup, climbing a tree and listening to the unholy Satanist prophet Ebony Way sobbing in a tree she… Well, she wouldn’t have not believed it, anything was possible, but certainly even Lily would have been dubious.

 

Wizard Lenin, she thought to herself, would never have believed it.

 

The gang was all sitting up on rather unstable branches in a tree, Luna, Lily, and even Rabbit have taken Wizard Trotsky’s advice and looking their own goffick part with dark eyeshadow, thick mascara, an ungodly amount of eyeliner, deep red lipstick, and clothing that barely covered their bodies (except for Rabbit, who, as the male form of goth, had taken to wearing clothing that was far too loose).

 

Death, the true goth among them besides what was left of Wizard Lenin, was wearing the usual combination of leather everywhere and a t-shirt for a band Lily had never heard of until they’d started playing in Hogsmeade incessantly.

 

And Ebony, as usual, was sobbing. She looked up, blinking through her tears, and greeted them all, “Hi Vampire, Darkness, and Tom Rid.”

 

Well, didn’t Lily just feel like chopped liver?

 

Wizard Trotsky the Darkness spared her a knowing and rather amused smile before turning his attention back to poor Ebony Way. Maybe Lily would feel bad if she hadn’t seen Ebony crying at least ten times every day. It was starting to lose its impact.

 

And wasn’t it amazing that Ebony could still somehow sound flirtatious even through crocodile tears of blood?

 

Draco hugged her, hands lingering on her hips in a blatantly sexual manner as he attempted to comfort her and cop a feel at the same time.

 

The bloody tears only increased, and then, through her sobbing, Ebony explained, “Draco and I were frenching passively…”

 

Could one shove their tongue down another’s throat passively? It seemed a rather non-passive action, Lily thought to herself. In fact, there was little more active than trying to choke another human being with your tongue.

 

“When suddenly, I fell asleep,” Ebony continued, not explaining how her passive French kissing had been so boring to cause her to pass out, “I started having a dream. In it a black guy was shooting two goffick men with long black hair.”

 

Ebony’s eyes grew wide, a haunted expression taking over her face as she recounted the gothic men’s cries of agony, “They pleaded, ‘No, please don’t fucking kill us, one’ but he just kept shooting them. He ran away in a red car. And then, then I woke up, screaming, ‘No, oh my fucking god, eleven!”

 

Now, why these people kept shouting numbers was beyond Lily but she supposed to question that part of the story would be rather preppy of her.

 

She started to sob harder, the blood coating her face now as she stammered out, “The worst part is that it was Lucien and Sirius!”

 

“Oh, fuck it!” Vampire gasped, and then tears of blood began to run down his own pale cheeks.

 

Lily blinked, looked at Death sobbing, then at the pale Draco, and asked, “Who the fuck are they?”

 

Everyone turned to look at her, glaring, how dare Lily ask who these people were, but honestly, at this point she was starting to lose track of who had once been who and who she was supposed to give a shit about. Apparently both Sirius and Lucien were important, or something, specifically to Vampire Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy but… Well….

 

Maybe Lily as just too tired to care.

 

“Lily,” Wizard Trotsky said lightly with a rather thin smile on Darkness’ face, “Allow me to say what I think you meant to say, ‘Oh no, noot Sirius and Lucien! They were my favorites!”

 

Lily could only look at him with raised eyebrows, eyebrows raising even high as he suggested, “Also, Lily is a bit preppish, we might have to start calling you Bloody Gothic Rose.”

 

And Lily, even after seeing Wizard Lenin die then resurrect himself, make sweet love to him on the carpet of his gothic store multiple times, decided that she could not even anymore.

 

“Do we know who did it?” Luna asked quietly only to have Wizard Trotsky hold a finger up towards her.

 

Apparently Wizard Trotsky, reminiscent of Wizard Lenin in many ways, was going full on Henry Higgens as he was teaching both Lily and Luna the ways of the goth.

 

“No, Luna… And I think we should start calling you Devil Moon, anyways, you need to add the word ‘fuck’ somewhere in there, like so,” Darkness turned to Ebony, cleared her throat, and asked, “What fucking dick did that, Ebony?”

 

“I don’t know,” Ebony said, shaking her head in dismay. Then, with a look of determination, wiping the blood from her face, she said, “Now, come on, we have to tell Dumbledore!”

 

“Are you serious?” Lily asked, only for Wizard Lenin to hit her across the back of her head and give her an unamused rather familiar look, as if Lily was making an ass of herself. And it was… Strangely heart wrenching, even now, to witness it.

 

Soon enough though they were scrambling down the tree and headed back into the castle, up the stairs, and into the headmaster’s office. There was Dumbledore, still with his dyed hair, moodily tinkering with one of his many gleaming instruments on the table, pouting slightly and not even looking up as they barged in.

 

“Sire,” Draco shouted as they poured into the room like a gothic plague, tears streaming down his face that Ebony and Vampire dutifully wiped away from his eyes, “Our dads have been shot! Enoby had a vision in a dream!”

 

Dads? Oh, oh suddenly it made a bit more sense. Lucien must be what Lucius had become, and Sirius… Well, Lily had no idea who the hell Sirius was but apparently he was Death’s, or, well, Vampire’s father. Did that make him Lily’s father?

 

Dumbledore sat up, looked at them, then began to cackle madly as he asked, “And how do you aspect me to know Ebony’s not divisional?”

 

Ebony glared, fire in her eyes, and pounded her hands down upon Dumbledore’s table, rattling what remained of his collection of odd instruments, “Look, motherfucker, you know very well that I’m not decisional!”

 

Lily wondered if she herself was decisional, she wasn’t quite sure. Honestly, she wasn’t even quite sure what that meant. Likely the missing word of the day was delusional.

 

Ebony then pointed to the window, to where Great Britain awaited, and with death in her pale blue eyes demanded, “Now get some fucking pipple to look for Ceres and Lucien, ponto!”

 

That seemed to be enough to intimidate Dumbledore as he leaned back in his seat, shrunk down, and said, “Okay, where are they?”

 

Ebony paused, appeared to consider this, then said with a strange amount of certainty for her rather vague vision, “Longdon.”

 

She then even went so far as to name a street, in what Lily presumed was actually London, which beggared the question of why they were asking for a search party at all when Ebony exactly where the bloody hell they were. In another time and place Wizard Lenin would be bringing up this exact point, flaunting it before Ebony Way and forcing her into humiliated contrition for her own stupidity.

 

But this was not that world, the Wizard Lenin that remained was silent, instead choosing to sneak an arm around Lily’s waist and pull her closer to him so he could inhale the scent of her hair.

 

And according to Wizard Trotsky within Ginny, at least, there was no going back and death itself was not an option.

 

Dumbledore exited the room for a few minutes, leaving them to their own devices, Wizard Trotsky moving to Dumbledore’s chair and sitting inside it with a far too pleased look on Darkness Weasley’s face.

 

“You know, though I never dreamed of sitting in this chair, I must say, that it’s very comfortable,” Dark Tequila said, looking at her peers and winking at Lily’s own dull look towards her.

 

Soon enough though Dumbledore was back, not even batting an eyelash at Darkness in his seat, as he proclaimed, “People, we’re going out looking for them.”  


“But sir, I thought we knew where they were,” Luna pointed out, before glancing at Wizard Trotsky and correcting herself, “Sorry, um fucking sir, I thought we fucking dick knew where they were… you bastard.”

 

Luna finished this with a weak smile, unnecessary, as everyone who was a goff didn’t even blink at the statement or notice that Luna had even opened her mouth.

 

“We’ll work on that,” Wizard Trotsky said after a few moments of awkward silence.

 

However, they all just kept standing there, clearly going nowhere and no one looking as if they were in any rush to go anywhere. Eventually a telephone rang, which Lily hadn’t known wizards used telephones, though she supposed the gothic ones apparently did. Dumbledore quickly grabbed it, nodded a few times, before slamming it down, “They’ve been found!”

 

“Oh, were they in Longdon?” Lily couldn’t help but ask derisively, and at Ginny Weasley’s chiding look corrected, “Sorry, were they in fucking Longdon like she fucking said you fucking dumbass?”

 

Maybe there was something to the gotchic dialect, Lily couldn’t help but think, because there was something so cathartic and stress relieving at simply stringing expletives together and fitting normal conversation in between.

 

“Well now you just go too far, Bloody Rose,” Wizard Trotsky muttered in Ginny’s voice but apparently, she had done a good enough job as Wizard Lenin’s hand on her waist squeezed as if to comfort her in her fit of rage.

 

And there was much rejoicing, hugging, and Death announcing, “I’m going to go slit my wrists in my room!” before heading off to undoubtedly go attempt suicide in his room, and fail, just as Draco himself had failed before him.

 

Lily couldn’t help but wish him luck.

 

All too soon though they were waiting in the hospital wing for, presumably, Lucien and Sirius. And, in the meantime, Wizard Trotsky had taken his role of impersonating Henry Higgins, gothic style, to an absurd degree.

 

With extravagant hand gestures with Ginny Weasley’s pale hands, he explained, “You see, Bloody Rose and Devil Moon, it’s not about simply adding in fuck and pronouncing it like a deaf Scotsman, there’s an art to it. For example, if I were to say, ‘The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain’ it would not do to translate it to, ‘The fooking rayen in Spayne staas fucking manly in de fucking plan.’ That’s too much, I sound like I’ve had a stroke, or worse yet, heaven forbid, that I am mocking our gothic overlords.”

 

Lily and Luna exchanged a glance while Rabbit with all the focus of a corpse, stared blankly at a wall. Wizard Lenin, at least, had decided to wander over by Ebony and comfort her, or else attempt to then give up and begin slitting his wrists while Vampire returned from previously slitting his wrists.

 

She couldn’t help but watch in morbid fascination as Wizard Lenin departed the world, blood spurting from him, but then didn’t, rather came back, as if he hadn’t cut himself open at all and everything was fine…

 

Death, truly, was dead. Or, she thought as she spared a glance for Vampire, as close to dead as Death could get.

 

Wizard Trotsky, completely desensitized or else indifferent, instead continued, “Instead one should try for a lighter, though still jarring, ‘The fucking rain in Spain stays manly in de fucking plain.’ See, you have to pick and choose which words you mispronounce, pick one with an English word that sound similar though off at one syllable or another, and add explatives as descriptors rather than sprinkle them all over the sentence. They should have no impact whatsoever, but there should still be far less common than your usual everyday terms.”

 

Apparently, he’d spared quite a bit of thought on this.  


“Also, pretend you’re seeing the words written, only someone has failed to replace a one with an exclamation point. So instead of shouting a sentence angrily, you should end it by screaming one, eleven, or one-hundred eleven if you’re very fucking upset at all the fucking preppy bastards.”

 

“But what if I’m not upset at the fucking preppy bastards?” Luna leaned forward to ask.

 

“One is always upset at the fucking preppy bastards and Christinas of the world,” Wizard Trotsky noted drily, “Though you bring up an excellent point, Devil Moon, when you see Brittany in the hall, always go out of your way to make her life as miserable as possible.”

 

“Who the hell is Brittany?” Lily couldn’t help but ask.

 

“It doesn’t matter who she is,” Ginny insisted with a manic grin as she leaned forward toward Lily, a hunger in her eyes, “All that matters is she suffers more than any other being has suffered for the audaciousness of wearing pink and listening to Ashley Simpson.”

 

Before they could get into the subject of Brittany further, the doors opened, they stood and saw Professor Sinister and or Trevoli walking in behind two stretchers containing two wounded men. She, once again, was decked out in a leather black dress, with a corset upper portion, covered in what looked like dried blood. Because why not cover things in blood and wear it?

 

Ebony, Draco, and Vampire began to weep with joy and embrace one another and then embrace Ebony Way in clear gratitude as the savior of these two random men who looked nothing like Lucius Malfoy once had.

 

Lily, looking down upon them, wondered if this pair wouldn’t wish to be dead instead, if it were within their capacity to die. However, such wishes were likely beyond them now, as they were beyond the weeping Wizard Lenin joining the crowd above the pair.

 

This, Lily thought blankly to herself, truly was the end.

 

Ebony disappeared with the professor for a moment or two, missing the touching scene of Death and Draco reuniting with their fathers, and… And Lily wondered if there wasn’t something to this world, cruel and simplistic, yes, but when had she ever seen such joy on Death’s face?

 

Still, still, even with that Lily could not and would not condone this.

 

A banner was put up, upon Ebony’s return from a dark room reporters appeared out of nowhere, flashing pictures of her and Dumbledore over the fantastic heroics that saved Sirius and Lucien. A black and red cake was brought out, fireworks in the shape of skulls were set off inside the room, the rest of the gothic crew piled in, and soon it seemed the room was filled with gothic joy with only Lily as a hopeless outsider.

 

The party raged on, and eventually, with a sigh, Lily exited the room into the silent hallway, staring forth as if she was staring into the face of the abyss. What was she going to do now?

 

Slowly, silently, she walked up the stairs and back into the Default common room, thoughts everywhere and nowhere as she went. Thinking of paper cut outs of men and their simple, empty, happiness.

 

Unfortunately, she walked in on a scene that completely jarred her out of her thoughts and straight into disgusted horror.

 

“Goddammit!” she cried out, because there, naked as the day they were born, was Ebony riding atop Draco Malfoy like a cowboy inside her coffin with Death filming through a video camera while he masturbated to the sight of it.

 

She had never, ever, needed to see any part of Draco’s naked body again, much less see his dick up Ebony Way’s vagina. Lily winced and looked away, cringing and trying not to think that this scene was now preserved on camera of all things, filled by the perverted (both in substance and in mind) Uncle Death.

 

Then, behind Lily, was Professor McGonagall and Snape, “What the fuck are you doing?!”

 

Ebony and Draco fell out of the coffin, scrambling naked on the floor, screaming in tandem, “Oh my Satan, one!”

 

McGonagall apparently was having none of that as she glared down at the pair, “Come now!”

 

The pair sheepishly put back on their clothes, Snape taking the camera from Death with a glint in his eyes and stuffing it into his pocket.

 

“Hey, what the fuck?!” Death asked Snape, hands raised in the air in questioning.

 

“Yeah, buster, what the fuck are you going to do with the fucking camera?!” Draco demanded, shielding Ebony as if this could somehow erase the sex tape he’d just made with Ebony.

 

“Look, Dumblewhore knows your little secret, and if you do this again you will go to St. Mungos,” Death sneered before screaming, “So give me back the camera one, one, one, one, one!”

 

Snape merely cackled like a poor man’s villain, “Ha ha ha, the mystery of magic thinks he is crazy! There is no way they will believe him!”

 

“Yes, so shut your miffouf, you insolent fools!” McGonagall chimed in before herding all of them, even Lily who apparently was guilty by association, out of the Default common room and into a strange white room that looked like someone’s torture chamber.

 

At the sight of the silver metallic tools on the table, Draco started to cry, then Ebony started to cry, and then Death took out a black handkerchief to dab at Ebony’s moist bloody eyes. Then, without a moment’s of hesitation, both he and Snape had guns out of nowhere pointed towards one another.

 

“Holy shit!” Lily cried out, holding her hands in the air, realizing that without warning they had somehow been thrust into either a torture scenario or a Mexican standoff.

 

Lily barely had enough time to fall to the floor before they started shooting at each other and missing wildly despite only standing a few feet from one another, both were screaming in rage as bullets embedded themselves in the wall.

 

Not to be outdone, Ebony took out her wand, turned on Snape, and cried out, “Crucio!”

 

Snape shuddered, fell to the floor and dropped the gun, and at this point Death seemed to be out of bullets. With the shooting done Ebony stopped the curse and Lily slowly, hesitantly, got to her feet wondering how in the hell this had escalated from partying in the hospital wing to unforgivable and bullets in a secret interrogation chamber.

 

Except before Lily could slink away McGonagall had apparently decided they weren’t done yet, with a wave of her wand Lily, Death, Draco, and Ebony were chained to the wall. McGonagall began to rifle through the shining, metallic, tools, lingering over the wrench.

 

 That was it, Lily thought, she was going to have to murder professor McGonagall in cold blood.

 

Except… McGonagall stopped, looked up, then said, “Okay, Severus, I’m going to go now.”

 

And just like that she walked right out the door.

 

“The fucking bloody hell?” Lily asked, but no one answered, or even seemed to think about the oddity of McGonagall simply leaving. Instead Snape, once again, was standing there cackling like a drunk madman while Death began to sob and tear at his chains.

 

Draco looked at Ebony and said, “It’s okay, Enoby, every green will be alright. Remember the sideo you took of Snake.”

 

For a moment, Ebony looked reassured, until, with more mad cackling, Snape took out some whips. And Lily wasn’t feeling alright at all, in fact, she was beginning to wonder if this was even happening at all or if she wasn’t in some bizarre dream world.

 

Because she was still lost on how she’d gone from being at a party over Sirius and Lucien to… This.

 

“No, eleven!” Draco, Death, and Ebony all screamed at the sight of the whips.

 

Snape merely continued his mad laugh as he took the camera out of his pocket. He then proceeded to move towards Draco, creating a ring of stones around his feet and lighting a candle beneath him.

 

“What the fuck are you doing?!” Ebony shouted, but Snape merely continued to laugh, not even taking a breath, and then, to Lily’s horror, he dropped his pants.

 

“Oh god!” Lily cried, wincing and looking away, but it was too late. Too late because she’d seen it once before, but much too late now because now it appeared to be tattooed with a giant snake on it.

 

Then, with a wave of his wand, he conjured a knife handing it to the chained Ebony, commanding, “You must stab Vrumpire, if you don’t, then I’ll rap Draco, one!”

 

Oh, well, Lily had gotten that idea from his tattooed penis, but thinking on it now she turned to Ebony and considered their options. More, she considered how surreal it was and just what she was willing to do about any of this. Finally, she said, “I’m much more attached to De… Vampire, I say we let Draco lie back and think of England.”

 

“No, you fucking bastrad, one!” Ebony cried out in anger and despair. She looked at Draco, staring at her with silent pleading eyes, she looked at Death who was doing the same, and it seemed Ebony was in a dilemma that no human was capable of solving.

 

Meanwhile, Snape, laughing, got on his knees with his pants down to his ankles, and proceeded to pray to Voldemort, “Oh Voldemort, please smite these stooped insolent ludicrous fools!”

 

Then, this not being enough, he appeared to try to summon Voldemort. This was done, while half dressed, his penis jiggling everywhere, huge, tattooed, and awful, as he did what looked like the rain dance around the stones surrounding Draco, whipping Draco and Vampire periodically, while Lily did her best not to hurl.

 

Oh god, the images she did not need inside her head, surely, this was hell.

 

“Dumbledork will get you!” Draco shouted, ignoring the welts raising on his chest and the blood beginning to weep out from the wounds.

 

“Ja,” Vampire chimed in, “Just wait up til the mystery find out eleven!”

 

Snape didn’t notice as, somehow while chained to the wall, Ebony took out her wand.

 

“You ridiculous donderhead, one, one, one!” Snape shouted, stopping, thankfully, blissfully, in his horrible dance. Except, no, worse then, he approached Draco and took off all of his clothes while Lily winced and looked away. This, she was certain, she did not need to see.

 

“Crucio!” Ebony stopped Snape before he could touch Draco, Snape instead backing up, screaming, running around the room and tearing at his hair like a madman. She grabbed her small phone out of her pocket and fiddled with the buttons and stopped the curse.

 

“You dunderhead, one, one, one!” Snape rasped, panting as he caught his breath, suddenly appearing the broken middle-aged man that he was, “I’m going to kill…”

 

And then the strangest thing happened. Another Severus Snape stepped into the room. It was… It was him as he had been, but not quite, more the cardboard version of a person that McGonagall had become rather than the half-naked Voldemort worshipping sadist that was standing before him.

 

Sadist Snape hid the whip behind his back but doing nothing to correct his lack of pants, cheerfully smiling at his counterpart, “Oh, hello Sev, I was just teaching them something.”

 

Behind him Lucien and or Sirius (Lily could not tell) darted into the room along with Professor Sinister and or Trevoli. Severus, the counterpart, unlocked the chains around Lily and the others and instead put them around Severus de Sade.

 

And with that, Lily walked out of the room in a daze, determined that she just wasn’t even going to think anymore about anything.

 

Ever.

 

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	18. The Waste Land

**AN: I said shut the fuck up you queffs111 Stop calling Ebony a Mary Sue OK! You dee not even know what’s going to happen OK so fook you1111 Fangs to ma BFF Raven for dee help1111 And The Carnivorous Muffin, you fooking bic.**

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_In which Ebony goes back in time, reality crumbles like sand castles in Lily’s shaking fingertips, and even in depths of Hell there are Hot Topic stores to be found_

 

* * *

 

Unfortunately, everyone followed Lily out of the room, and there was simply no escaping the surreal and horrifying madness. The sinister professor towed Snape de Sade, shackled and chained and still half naked, behind Draco, Ebony, Death, Lily, and all the rest of them as they walked through the hallway towards God only knew what destination.

 

Hogwarts itself was almost unrecognizable at this point, as if, when Lily had blinked it had begun twisting itself, transforming rooms, painting walls, and altering hallways. Walking along, staring at posters of unfamiliar bands on the walls where portraits had once been, Lily wondered if she would even be able to find her way back to the Default common room, if it even existed anymore.

 

“I always knew you were on Voldemort’s side, you son of a beaker one, one, one!” Snape sans de Sade hissed out to his counterpart in disgust. An interesting notion, because while technically true (or at least, Snape had once been a Death Eater) she hadn’t necessarily realized this until he’d started praying to Voldemort, she wondered how he’d revealed himself to the other Snape.

 

Well, revealed himself as being a Death Eater, he’d certainly revealed himself by dropping his pants. Unless that had somehow been enough…

 

Lily was going to stop thinking about that.

 

The irony of this situation also seemed lost upon both Snapes, both acting as if they were talking to an entirely different human being, rather than a mirror image of themselves. In fact, only Lily truly seemed to be aware that there was a Snape one and Snape two, so the irony, the sheer discomfort and surreal nature of the scene, was lost upon everyone except for Lily herself.

 

“No, I’m not,” Snape de Sade insisted, tears gathering at the corner of his eyes as the shackles bit into his pale wrists, his face twisting into a grotesque mask of desperation, “I was teaching them something, one!”

 

Lily walking along, feeling more than out of sorts with everything, was wondering if he somehow had. She felt as if she’d learned something, or at least, was finally being forced to realize that things had gone beyond the point of no return.

 

Certainly, beyond some line of conceivable sanity.

 

“Oh, fucking yeah?” Ebony sneered, her own look of contempt marring her otherwise attractive features. She took a vial of mysterious black liquid out of her pocket and gave it to Snape sans de Sade who, with excessive force, forced it down his gagging counterpart’s throat even as they walked through the hallways while Lucien and or Sirius (Lily still couldn’t tell) took out an old-fashioned tape recorder with glee.

 

None seemed concerned for the sound of Snape choking, the way his eyes bulged even as the liquid when down his unwilling throat.

 

Lily wondered, if in some other world, this was a sane occurrence. She felt strangely light as she walked along, her feelings removed from her, as if her mind had simply accepted that she was in a dream. There were no consequences, no causes, nothing at all but simple perpetual motion of torture and fucking and death.

 

Snape gagged and convulsed in his chains, his other half casting curses down upon him while Lily watched with blank and tired eyes. What world was she even inhabiting anymore?

 

It was at this point that Lily and the rest were ushered away by the sinister professor and Lucien Malfoy (or else Sirius, but Lily supposed it hardly mattered), Lily looking behind her to watch as the sobbing Snape confessed his sins to himself, his other half gleefully torturing him for every syllable, without a care in the world for the strangeness of the situation or the irony.

 

Death and Draco were then escorted back to the hospital wing, leaving Lily, Ebony, and the professor behind to walk into a strange dark room that Lily had never been in before.

 

How were there so many rooms within Hogwarts that Lily had never noticed? Or else, when had they been added to the castle? Had they even existed before this moment in time or did they suddenly appear when they were needed as if they had always been there?

 

Posters of strange bands like Nirvana and the now somewhat familiar MCR were plastered all over the room. Their dead eyes stared down upon the room’s occupants in judgement.

 

“Ellie!”

 

Lily turned, and suddenly just about everyone she’d ever met was entering the cramped room. There was Luna, dashing towards her to hug her, followed by Rabbit, Darkness the Trotsky, Wizard Lenin, Hermione, and that new girl whose name Lily had never actually learned.

 

It… Greengrass and Zabini were missing, missing for a while now, probably long since eaten by the goffick monster. Wizard Lenin was hardly Wizard Lenin or any form of Tom Riddle anymore. Still though, some fragment of Default was somehow, against all possibilities, here to see her.

 

Lily embraced Luna back, hands hesitant as if they did not quite belong to her, as if the feelings of tender, fragile, happiness and gratitude did not quite belong to Lily either.

 

Wizard Lenin glanced at Lily, something in his eyes, but only for a moment, before he handed Ebony a black bag with the simple explanation, “It’s form my store.”

 

Ebony turned to Professor Trevoli the Sinister and asked, even as she took the bag into her own hands, “What’s in the bag?”

 

“You will see,” the professor said, but upon opening it, it revealed nothing more than black lingerie posing as clothing suited to be worn in public. In other words, no different than anything else Ebony wore on a day to day basis.

 

Well, except Ebony was acting like Christmas had come ten thousand years early.

 

Lily felt her eyebrows lower as she watched the scene and realized that something… Something wasn’t right. Well, nothing was every right here but this…

 

The gifts, the smiles… It was like they were sending Ebony somewhere, or saying goodbye, or doing something that was indictive of beginning a perilous quest. Even as Ebony joyfully put on the new dress, courtesy of Wizard Lenin, Lily felt her mouth open to ask a question, a horrified question that she didn’t even know how to word.

 

Only a desperate inconsolable fear.

 

Something, everything, was about to change.

 

“You look fucking kawaii, bitch,” B’loody Hermione said with glee when Ebony was in her new attire and her new matching dramatic makeup, looking more or less the same as ever, yet somehow inspiring awe among her gothic peers.

 

“Fangs,” Ebony responded with a grin, bearing her fangs as she said it.

 

And then the sinister professor announced, casually, as if discussing the weather, “Okay, now you’re going to go back in tim.”

 

Lily felt her head move oh so slowly, turn unnaturally towards the woman, as she asked a blunt yet somehow quiet, “What?”

 

But no one seemed to care, Lily felt as if the floor beneath her were disappearing as the professor calmly kept talking and handed Ebony a gun to strap to the inside of her fishnet tights, “You have to do it in a few sessions.”

 

Then, she gave her a small black sphere with a miniature hour glass inside, undoubtedly the time machine itself, and with the sight of it everything, or the possibility of everything fell into place.

 

Lily reached for it with a desperation that she had not known she possessed, was even capable of possessing with Death dead, Wizard Lenin dead, and everyone else on the express train towards gothic heat death, “Wait!”

 

“After an hour use the time tourner to go back here.”

 

Ebony stepped away from Lily’s desperately reaching fingers, and it was as if time and space were already contorting to Ebony’s whims rather than Lily’s, because no matter how she tried Lily could not reach her.

 

“Good luck one!” Everyone shouted, a horrible chorus, even as Lily’s single voice cried out, “Wait, please!”

 

And then, just like that, it was too late.

 

Reality ripped at the seams, time and space twisted away, a dark abyss opened its maw beneath Lily and screamed. She reached out, her own pale hand a bright star in the darkness, and she herself was screaming as she fell downward into emptiness.

 

And T.S. Eliot, again, pounded inside of her skull like a drumbeat desperately out of rhythm. A wake for the dead who could not die, who only Lily was capable of mourning, of an entire world that had been reduced to an illusion that once was.

 

_“I think we are in the rats’ alley where the dead men lost their bones,”_ Lily’s mind whispered inside of her inner ear as she fell further and faster than she ever had before.

 

_“What is that noise? The wind under the door.”_

Lily clutched at her ears, screaming to drown out the screaming of the world, of Wizard Lenin, Death, and all sentient beings crying murderer and enabler inside of her head.

_“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”_

 

And their eyes, their eyes were black and gouged out and bleeding as they stared up at her, reaching desperately, Wizard Lenin among them in the very front of the mob of all those Lily had left behind.

 

Lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eyes…

 

_“Nothing again nothing.”_

And was it Snape, with whips and his limp penis laughing madly in the distance, in the emptiness? Was it Dumbledore sitting indifferent in his office chair? Or was it someone else entirely? Rabbit or an entity like him laughing in mirth at the collapse of everything.

_“Do you know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember nothing?”_

She remembered… She whispered the last line to herself, eyes wide as she stared into the aftermath of reality and it stared back, “I remember those are the pearls that were his eyes…”

 

Lily crashed to the earth, she looked up, she was on cobblestone and staring upwards there was none other than Hogwarts Castle, Ebony Way standing beside her looking at it with determination. At the sight of it, Lily felt herself shudder, shake, and begin to sob.

 

Then, looking down, a pair of black shoes in front of her and looking up, “Oh… Oh, Lenin.”

 

There he was, as gothic and beautiful as ever, an angel that fell from the heavens and became submerged in the filth and decay of this dying world, dressed in a ripped men’s suit with far too casual of shoes to match the flat cruelty of his smile.

 

And Lily was certain, that if she were capable of it, that the mere sight of him as he was now would be enough to dye her tears red with blood.

 

“Hi,” Ebony said flirtatiously as she stepped towards him, ignoring Lily completely. Staring at Ebony’s feet, Lily noted that her legs were angled almost unnaturally by the curve of her heeled boots, “I’m Enoby Way, the new student.”

 

She reached out and shook his hands, hers were covered in black nail polish, the sight of it unseemly against his pale skin. However, a glance at his face, at his smirk, and he didn’t even seem to notice.

 

More, he no longer had the capability to notice.

 

“The name’s Tom,” he responded, his lips quirking into a seductively cruel smile, except there was nothing in it, not truly, even now he was only a reflection of what he once was, “But you can call me Satan, that’s my middle nam.”

 

Wizard Lenin, once, would have been mortally offended by that, perhaps afterwards he would have laughed at the idea of referring to himself as the devil. No one was laughing now.

 

And though Lily had seen this, this flat gothic incarnation of him before, this time it felt different. He was not Wizard Lenin, nor was he Hindenburg or even Wizard Trotsky. They were backwards in time, to a Tom Riddle that had never existed and now was corrupted beyond repair.

 

Because if this was what he was now, how could he ever regain the capability of becoming Wizard Lenin and the others?

 

With utter indifference, Ebony’s time travel had spread the disease and destroyed any fragment of Wizard Lenin that could have remained.

 

Lily was certain of it.

 

Lily picked herself up off the ground and watched the pair with dead and dull eyes as they continued smirking seductively at each other.

 

Finally, the fallen Tom Riddle nodded towards the castle, his sultry crooked smile growing, “Well, come on, we have to go upstairs.”

 

And just like that, without any explanation, with barely a glance at Lily herself, they were off up the stairs and into the castle.

 

As they walked Ebony asked, bright eyed, “Hey, Satan, do you happen to be a fan of Grenday, since MCR and even incense don’t exist yet then?”

 

Lily had no idea who or what a Grenday was, she doubted Tom Riddle fifty years ago would either, but surprisingly he exclaimed with almost girlish glee, “Oh my fooking god, how did you know?!”

 

He then added, as if confessing to an inside joke that only Ebony Way could possibly appreciate, “Actually, I like GC a lot too.”

 

GC, Lily was starting to wonder if she was haunted by GC. Hadn’t all of this begun with a GC concert in Hogsmeade?

 

Ebony giggled, a truly wretched sound coming from her, “OMG, me too!”

 

And somehow, Lily saw this coming even before the words were out of the devil’s, Tom Riddle’s, mouth, “Guess what? They have a concert in Hogsment.”

 

Why? Why was Lily not surprised? In Hell, it turned out, there was a concert in Hogsmeade every day, and it always starred GC.

 

Ebony’s brow furrowed in confusion as she asked, “Hogsment?”

 

“Yeah, that’s what they used to call it in these times before it became Hogsmeade in 2000,” he noted, almost as an aside to his blinking audience, particularly since last Lily checked it had been only 1992. Also unexplained was how the Tom Riddle, or Satan, of the past was aware of future events such as the changing of Hogsmeade’s name to Hogsmeade.

 

No, Lily decided, she was simply in Hell. That was the only reasonable explanation, because explanations period had simply stopped existing. Somewhere along the way she had found herself in Hell.

 

Then, with even more excitement, Ebony added for him, “And there’s a really cool shop called Hot Topic!”

 

Satan frowned with Tom Riddle’s face, a look of confusion on his features, “No, it’s called Hot Issue, then in 1998 they changed it to Hot Topic.”

 

Ebony looked as if the universe suddenly started making sense, all while Lily… stared. It was all she could do, just stare at this scene, and wonder.

 

“So, is Dunglydor your principle?” Ebony asked as they continued climbing the stairs upwards, upwards, and upwards towards god only knew what. He nodded, musing, and then noted, “I’m in Slytherin.”

 

“OMFG!” Ebony cried with even more glee than before, “Shmee too!”

 

Lily, having once been in Slytherin herself, wasn’t nearly so excited by the prospect.

 

“You go to the skull?” Satan asked with confusion, undoubtedly because Ebony and Lily had appeared out of nowhere and thus should have no real knowledge of what the hell a Slytherin even was.

 

However, Ebony seemed to not really get the crux of the issue as she happily responded, “Ja, that’s why I’m here, I’m new!”

 

Dumbledore then, like Voldemort before him, chose to suddenly fly in through the window on his broomstick to start shouting things completely out of context about how he would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for those meddling kids.

 

Well, except new was Dumbledore’s strangely blonde well-kept hair, and a polo shirt from some place called American Eagle. “No talking in the halls!” he cried, glaring down at the three of them for daring to loiter in the hallway like a trio of students, “Stupid goffs!”

 

Satan merely rolled his eyes at the display, as if this was a daily occurrence, and explained, “His so mean to us goffs and punks jus because we’re in Sleetherine and we’re not preps.”

 

Lily hated to say that she kind of saw where Dumbledore was coming from with that, except, well, if Dumbledore hadn’t gone off the handle in the other direction.

 

Well, Ebony was not about to take that sitting down, she whirled and accused Dumbledore, “Actually, I think mabe it’s because you’re the bark lord!”

 

The bark lord, good god.

 

Dumbledore, lord of trees and ents and bark, why not? At this point anything was possible, certainly it made more sense than Ebony accusing him of being the dark lord before Voldemort even existed.

 

Dumbledore reeled at the accusation, as one must do when being accused of being a bark lord, “WTF?!”

 

But Ebony was at once demure and sweet again as she innocently said, “Oh, nothin.”

 

Then the floor, by the grace of god, fell open and swallowed Ebony Way whole. Lily looked down, blinking, but there was Ebony falling and then suddenly swallowed up as if she was never there in the first place.

 

And there was truly awkward silence.

 

Lily, blinking, noted, “Well, that happened.”

 

No one had anything to say to that, or to her at all. In fact, they all seemed to immediately lose interest, even what was left of Tom Riddle seemed to pay Lily no mind. So, Lily watched as they went their separate ways, only Lily remaining, slumping against a wall in the hallway and trying to catch up with what had happened.

 

She was in the past.

 

She was trapped in the warped past that had never existed, could not have possibly existed.

 

Wizard Lenin, because of it, had been corrupted beyond redemption, Luna would not exist for several years, and she had no idea where Rabbit was at this point. Even Ebony it seemed had been sucked out of existence.

 

She slid to the floor, staring out with dead eyes at the world around her, “What have we come to?”

 

No one answered though, there was no one too answer.

 

Lily was alone.

 

END OF CHAPTER

 

(Meanwhile, in the present, a desperate Professor Sinister and or Trevoli confessed her horrible addiction to Voldemort Serum to Ebony Way.

 

This is a very serious issue.)

 

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	19. The Shining

**AN: Shut the fuck up preps1111 Have you even read the story11 You are prolly all just preps and psers so fuck you111 Fangs to Raven for the help1 An The Carnivorous Muffin1**

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_In which Lily watches The Exorcist, reenacts a scene from The Shining, and comes to the only choice left to her in this desperate world._

 

* * *

 

The night was dark, cold, and there were no stars out even though Lily had spent the entire night, in the sleet and the rain, sitting on the Hogwarts roof waiting for a sign of light.

 

She supposed she could have seen Tom, Satan, whatever he was but that idea made her more than tired. It wasn’t like a knife in her heart, thinking about his dull eyes and his seductive terrible smile, it was like a lead weight tied to her soul, dragging her down and down and down again into that abyss between here and what once had been possible.

 

So, she didn’t go to see him.

 

Instead she tried to come to terms with what couldn’t possibly be reconciled. Everything she knew was gone, utterly, completely, and she hadn’t even seen it coming. Even when she’d thought she’d been preparing, protecting what she’d had left, she’d still been blindsided.

 

For all Lily’s power she really had no power at all, did she?

 

Morning came far too quickly, the sky brightening only slightly, as the rain never seemed to let up anymore. With a weighted weariness and soaked clothing, the shivering Lily made her way back inside, utterly indifferent to her own physical misery as she sat across from what was left of Tom Riddle.

 

He looked at her with raised eyebrows, a dull, flat, cruel sneer, as he devoured his toast that looked like it had been coated in blood instead of jam. Lily could only stare silently, dully, back.

 

And then, out of nowhere, the extradimensional void spitting her back out, was none other than Ebony Way, sitting at their table right next to Tom, with a bowl of Count Chocula breakfast cereal in front of her, like she’d never left at all.

 

And here Lily had been hoping that Rabbit, wherever he was, had devoured her.

 

Lily turned, slowly, a burning inside of her, to look at this girl who seemed at the root of every awful thing that had happened. Perhaps not the cause, but yes, Ebony Way had been there from the very beginning, the center of this brave new world of theirs. And she dared to be spat back out of wherever she’d been swallowed up into?

 

When no one else, not a single other person Lily had ever cared about, had?

 

Ebony barely glanced at Lily, eyes instead drifting to the staff table, where a tall dark haired man with eerily pale skin, wearing the stylish combination of a trashed suit and a pair of beaten up converse shoes, was guzzling a potion like a fraternity brother.

 

“Who’s he?” Ebony asked.

 

Tom glanced, eyebrows raised, then said, “Oh, that’s Professor Slutborn. He’s the portents teacher.”

 

Lily had taken that unfortunate moment to drink her tea and ended up choking and spewing it all over the table. As she caught her breath the pair continued talking.

 

“Ebony?” Satan posing as Tom Riddle asked.

 

“Ja?”

 

“Did you know that Marilyn Manson is playing in Hogsmeade tonight?” he continued, eyes alight with a fervent passion for whoever this Marilyn Manson fellow was, “And they are showing ‘The Exercise’ at the movies before that.”

 

‘The Exercise’… Did he mean ‘The Exorcist’?  It was entirely possible, Lily found her interest, dull at this point, sparked slightly. Yes… Yes, she could watch ‘The Exorcist’ again.

 

“Ja,” Ebony responded with a nod, as if she had known this all already.

 

Tom grinned, “Well, want to go to the contort the movie wif me?”

 

The answer, unsurprisingly, was yes, and soon after both Ebony and Tom Riddle disappeared up the stairs to go god only knew where, leaving Lily behind. Peering around she saw the usual mix of pinks and blacks, not a of color in between, or any true diversity for that matter.

 

Hogwarts had been completely and utterly annihilated.

 

It was this thought that slowly but surely, Lily exited the castle, and made her way down the path and into the village of Hogsmeade. It too had changed, gone was the constant Christmas décor, replaced instead by black jagged buildings with crucifixes nailed upside down above doorways.

 

The stores were utterly unrecognizable from where the Three Broomsticks had once stood as well as Honeydukes, all replaced by strange seedy bars or else stores declaring themselves Hot Issue with gothic beautiful grotesque beings loitering outside each. Eventually, Lily found herself loitering in front of one of the bars, the only one with any light at all coming from inside it.

 

And it was a gold almost inviting light, contrasting the glaring neon and fluorescent lighting of the stores around her. She felt as if it was beckoning solely to her, the only person left who would find such light welcoming.

 

Stepping inside and letting the door shut behind her, she found it was a golden, broad, hall, empty of people, lit by soft electric candles and surrounded on almost all sides by mirrors. This added to the illusion, or perhaps the truth, that it was bigger on the inside than it had been on the outside, more of a ballroom than a bar.

 

Slowly, she walked to the counter, as if driven on by some invisible force and eventually found her way to a seat on a red velvet barstool. For a moment she stared at her reflection, the gothic clothing, the tired dead eyes, and wondered just who it was she was staring at.

 

With a sigh she rubbed at her eyes, dragged fingers across them and pulled down on the skin of her face in utter weariness.

 

Then, as if he had always been there, she noticed the older Rabbit in a red suit and black bow-tie standing in front of her, serving as the bartender, as Lloyd the ghostly bartender of ‘The Shining’ her mind told her.

 

She felt her lips twist into a wry grin as she took him in piece by piece, from his impeccable suit, made soft in the lighting, to the dark pits that were his inhuman eyes, “Hi Lloyd, a little slow tonight, isn’t it?”

 

She burst out laughing and Rabbit as Lloyd, hands clasped in front of him ever so politely, responded, “Yes, it is Lily.”

 

He stepped forward, his polite smile never wavering once as he slid towards the counter to Lily’s sudden profound bemusement at his appearance, at this scene. Placing his hands on the counter, leaning forward, that smile ever so polite, he asked, “What will it be?”

 

Lily in turn leaned forward, eyes darkening, “Now, I’m awfully glad you asked me that, Lloyd. Because I just happen to have two twenties and two tens right here in my wallet.”

 

Lily slapped her pocket, both of them listening to the hard thump the sound made as Lily’s own smile tightened.

 

“I was afraid they were gonna be there ‘til next April,” Lily continued, as if this were a rather wry and witty joke, “So, here’s what, you slip me a bottle of bourbon, a little glass, and some ice.”

 

Her eyebrows raised, “You can do that, can’t you Lloyd?”

 

Lloyd as Rabbit merely kept smiling, hands clasped in front of him once again, oh so ready to serve her madness and liquor by the glass.

 

“You’re not too busy, are you?” Lily asked, chuckling hoarsely at her own joke.

 

“No sir,” Rabbit responded, lips quirking ever so slightly higher, “I’m not busy at all.”

 

Then, with a grace and efficiency that should have been alien to him, he grabbed the glass, the ice, and the bourbon.

 

“Good man!” Lily cried out, her smile growing into a truly devastating grin within the lit mirrors, “You set ‘em up and I’ll knock ‘em back, Lloyd! One by one!”

 

She reached for the wallet, suddenly in her fingertips, and opened it while Rabbit poured, finding its contents as empty as she expected. None the less she looked up, that dangerous smile back on her lips, “Say, Lloyd, it seems I’m temporarily light. How’s my credit in this joint anyway?”

 

Not a moment of hesitation, only a polite smile, and vast expressionless eyes, “Your credit’s fine, Lily.”

 

“That’s swell,” Lily declared, vanishing the wallet back into nothingness as she considered Lloyd, Rabbit, “I like you Lloyd, I always liked you. You were always the best of them; best goddamn bartender from Timbuktu to Portland Maine, or Portland Oregon for that matter.”

 

Lily raised her glass to him as he politely inclined his head and said, “Thank you for saying so.”

 

Lily took a drink, it tasted like golden death. She set it carefully, ever so carefully, down on the table and considered Rabbit once again. And, with the drink sliding its way down her throat and through her intestines, frankness came with it, “It’s over, Rabbit. The great charade, life, or whatever we thought to call and cherish in life, it’s done. Finished. Finito, Lloyd.”

 

Then, leaning forward, looking him dead in his empty, shark like, doll like, eyes, she asked, “Do you understand what that means?”

 

“Perfectly,” he responded, with politeness and without hesitation, the perfect bartender.

 

“Really?” Lily questioned further.

 

He regarded her for a moment, eyes lingering on her, then remarked, “It is a far more natural state, in the end of things. Even for you, Lily.”

 

“Natural?” Lily asked, “What in this is natural?”

 

“All things end,” he merely said, “You made it so, why the shock when they do what they were prescribed to do?”

 

“This is not an end,” Lily hissed, slamming her hands on the table and listening to the glass shudder beneath her pale fingertips, “I won’t let this, all of this, be the end! No, someone’s behind this, she, Ebony Way is behind this!”

 

Rabbit merely politely smiled, refilled her glass, and noted, “Ebony Way is a symptom of the disease you so lovingly call life, nothing more.”

 

Lily’s baleful eyes merely glared at him, past him and into her own reflection, through the glass and to the laughing, sobbing grotesque wretch that was Ebony Darkness Dimentia Raven Way.

 

“Still, it is your stage, Lily, if you feel you must… correct her, before the end, then I will hardly stand in your way,” he noted, his lips quirking higher, still polite, still empty of all but the faintest and most inhuman amusement, “Though, such actions are ultimately pointless.”

 

Lily stood, stepped back from the stool, standing on equal level to Rabbit now, “Pointless, Rabbit, does not equate meaninglessness.”

 

And with that she left the building, bearing her shoulders to the wind and the snow as she wandered outside in Hogsmeade, staring past all the identical grotesque buildings until she found the cinema, newly installed undoubtedly, now playing “The Exorcist” for all to see.

 

Stepping inside past the shadowy ticket seller she made her way into a seat in the middle row, staring blankly at the screen as the movie began to start, behind her, she heard obnoxiously loud voices, none other than Ebony Way and what was left of Tom Riddle.

 

At the sight of Reagan’s blood and bile, the twisting of her head and contortion of her body, the pair fell into hysterics. At some point, Tom began to smoke a cigar, the noxious fumes filled with red pentagrams began to clog the cinema and obscuring the view of the priests in that stark and cold room as they faced their incarnation of evil.

 

“OMG, one, one, one,” Tom cried out as he stood, in time as the aging priest doused the possessed Reagan in holy water and cried out, “The power of Christ compels you!”

 

“Enoby, guess what?” he continued, utterly oblivious to the sight on the screen, acting as a complete and utter caricature of what he once had been, “I knew that the amnesia potion had worked. Amnesia potion has not been invented yet so it will not work.”

 

There was no comment on how this completely contradictory sentence made any sense to either of them. He merely continued, undoubtedly with his head turned towards Ebony, “Too bad cause I wanted to use some on you.”

 

“Cool,” Ebony replied in a rather suggestive manner.

 

Then, the unmistakable sound of clothing torn from the body and the groans and moans of lovemaking. Lily did not turn, she merely watched, with the soundtrack of sex, as the possessed Reagan spoke of a little girl’s cunt.

 

“Excuse me, but you are going to have to leave one, one, one!” A woman’s voice shouted from behind Lily,

 

“Fuck you eleven,” was Ebony’s response, in time with Reagan’s own “fuck you” to the priests.

 

And then, suddenly, there was shrieking, the sound of lunging over chairs, and Lily turned to see Ebony way, naked, sucking the blood from a hapless woman’s neck as the woman shrieked, “Noooo eleven!”

 

There was clapping from those in dark clothing and smudged eyes, cheering and wolf whistling as they watched the woman die. And just like that, with the woman’s corpse hitting the floor, Tom and Ebony exited the theater.

 

Lily turned and watched as the priests valiantly tried and failed to exorcise the demon. Finally, Father Karres walked in on his dead elder, the room frigid, the demon staring down at him with a girl’s eyes dyed yellow, he pounded futilely with human rage upon his dead chest and then looked, with horror, at the demon itself sitting upon the bed.

 

“You son of a bitch!” Father Karres cried, tackling the demon, throwing it to the floor, and punching it repeatedly in the face.

 

“Take me,” he said even as he strangled Reagan, “Come into me! Goddamn you take me! Take me!”

 

The crucifix, torn from his neck, his face shaking, eyes changing into yellow, reaching for the sobbing, bruised, beaten girl, and then with a great defiant cry throwing himself and the demon out the window and to their death.

 

Lily, watching, was the last to leave the theater.

 

Outside she could hear the music playing, distant, discordant, terrible music that one would expect in Hell.

 

_“Light a candle for the sinners, set the world on fire. Anti-choice and anti-girl, I am the anti-flag unfurled. Anti-white and anti-man, I got the anti-future plan.”_

It came from the concert venue in Hogsmeade, neon lights flashing in the rain and sleet like the electric fires of Hell, and Lily, with calm preparation, walked towards it.

 

_“Anti-facist, anti-mod, I am the anti-music god. Anti-sober, anti-whore, there will never be enough of anti-law.”_

The ground thrummed as she approached, from the bass of the speakers, the shrieking of the words, to the jumping up and down of all the people in the great faceless mob before the band,

 

_“I can’t believe in the things, that don’t believe in me! Now it’s your turn to see what I hate about me, anti-people now you’ve gone too far._ ”

 

There, somewhere in this mob, was Ebony Way, towards the front undoubtedly, hanging off the arm of Tom Riddle or else Lucius Malfoy or perhaps even Draco Malfoy. Lily, silently, without emotion or inflection, summoned a cold steel handgun into her waiting fingertips.

 

_“Here’s your antichrist superstar!”_

 

The man stopped singing, motioning instead towards the cheering audience, “I would like to present xblackxtearx one, one! And there was Ebony Way, running on stage front and center, surrounded by a group of faceless goth men who all looked as if they would make love to a mere shadow of her.

 

She began to sing, _“Well if you wanted honesty, that’s all you had to say. I never want to let you down or have you go, it’s better off this way. For all the dirty looks, the photographs your boyfriend took, remember when you broke your foot from jumping out the second floor?”_

 

Lily trained the gun upon her, thinking of leaves in the wind, and the perfect, necessary, shot. The song went onwards, Ebony screaming and signing, _“I’m not okay!”_

 

At some point, Lucius’ fingers slipped, a clashing chord sounded awkwardly among the group. The music stopped. One of the other members of the band, standing on the other side of Ebony, turned to him, incredulous, “OMFG, one! What the fuck?!”

 

“Woops, I’m srry,” was all Lucius had to say with a rather bashful and cheeky grin.

 

“You fooking asshole one!” the other shouted, throwing his instrument to the side.

 

“You guys are such preps eleven!” Another member, one strangely reminiscent of a younger Severus Snape, hissed out.

 

Lily kept her eye and her gun trained on Ebony, breathing in and breathing out.

 

“Come on, it was a mistake one!” Lucius pleaded, wiping his hair back from his face, looking more anxious than even before.

 

“Ja, it’s not his fault eleven!” said one of the other previously quiet members of the band.

 

“No, he ruined the fucking song one!”

 

“You guys stop!” Ebony shrieked, but there was no stopping it, because then, at that moment, Lily pulled the trigger. The bullet, Lily imagined, sang as it whistled its way past the audience and into Ebony Way’s chest.

 

“OMFG no eleven!” Lucius cried as he covered his face, attempting to protect himself from the band member now brandishing a knife.

 

But Ebony had already fallen, thrown backwards, bleeding out even as the audience screamed, “No one, one, one!”

 

And Lily, slowly lowering the gun, but making no move to drop it, simply watched, and noted how, even with Ebony gone, nothing had changed.

 

END OF CHAPTER

**Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx**


	20. Invitation to a Beheading

_In which Lily is sentenced to death by beheadin by the goffick Wizengamot for the crime of gnostical turpitude as evidenced by the murder of Ebony Way._

 

* * *

 

In accordance with the law the death sentence was announced to Lily in a whisper.

 

At least, the laws of this world, undoubtedly a trial before the Wizengamot for murder in the world she’d previously inhabited would have been quite different. As it was though, Lily had not stood trial before the Wizengamot for murder at all, no, the murder of Ebony Way was merely evidence.

 

A rather large factor, but certainly resting among other small factors such as Lily’s ability to convert from prep to goth to back again, to exhibit behaviors of both clans without even a hint of remorse or conflict. Murder, in itself, was a non-concept, and if it was then it was only a crime depending on the disposition of the criminal.

 

Goths murdered, tortured, raped, and pillaged all the time, it was in their very nature to do so. In fact, to avoid these traits was to be a perversion of nature itself.

 

Similarly, preps were incapable of the slightest act of real violence, they crumpled in the face of righteous gothic adversity as they well should.

 

This, among other things, had been explained by the overdramatic prosecution in Lily’s trial.

 

“Not a fooking prep but not a fooking goff neither,” the man, in eyeliner, a ruined black suit, and dark stringy hair accused her with a black gloved finger, “She’s a fucking freak of nature, the stupid bitch.”

 

She’d been sitting, chained to her seat, thinking of nothing and everything as first the defense sang a pretty song and then the prosecution sang one too for good measure. And in the end, as she’d listened, it’d become clear to her that neither the defense nor the prosecution was for or against Lily.

 

Perhaps because, to them, in many ways, Lily was something that should not exist. She was a sentient being in a world where even the illusion of sentience had flickered out.

 

Now, in her cell in Azkaban, staring forward at the gray slabs of stone that formed the walls, Lily mused, that somehow the dank dreariness of her cell was somehow far more comforting than the empty and abandoned Hogwarts had been at the end of things.

 

She closed her eyes and breathed out, not a sigh of relief, but more of a means of letting go and…

 

“Eleanor, you stupid fucker prep, is that you?”

 

She opened them, there, across from her, was none other than Albus Dumbledore. Well, what was left of Albus Dumbledore, he was looking rather worse for wear and not just because of the goffism either. His hair was matted, gothic clothes hanging off of his frame, and Lily wondered if she had ever seen him look so old even with his hair dyed.

 

At catching her eye he cackled in delight, “Ha, I knew you’d end up here, you ludicrous motherfucker.”

 

Lily pursed her lips, noting, quietly, “You’re here.”

 

“I am old and weak and I have cancer,” he said, rather dismissively and without the least concern for his own health, “I will be in Hogwaaarts soon.”

 

Lily merely offered him a thin, polite, smile, knowing that Hogwarts was hardly any different from here and hardly any better. Albus Dumbledore was welcome to it.

 

“And you, fucker?” he asked.

 

“Death by beheading,” Lily noted, “I’m told it’s traditional.”

 

Newly, traditional, because as Lily had always heard it, it was the dementors that were supposed to devour the soul of those capitally punished. However, for whatever reason, the dementors no longer seemed to bother the English wizarding population. For that matter, Lily wondered if there were even dementors at all.

 

“Ja,” Dumbledore merely responded, neither with sympathy nor with much condemnation, quickly closing his own eyes and succumbing to sleep.

 

And Lily wondered exactly how long it would be now, they hadn’t said, she imagined they’d want to get it over with quickly, but they had seemed an easily distracted bunch even without Ebony Way in the room. In fact, without Ebony Way, Lily’s trial had often detoured into discussions of building her monument, holding her third and even fourth funeral, and the palace that should be made out of her mausoleum with both Draco and Vampire burying themselves inside of it with her.

 

In fact, from what she’d heard, it was a worldwide epidemic, as the world cut their wrists in despair so that they might join Ebony Way in the afterlife.

 

Lily’s trial had been delayed five times because of it, and even then, they’d lost half the Wizengamot members during the trial itself as they wept with rage and despair for the death of beloved Ebony Way.

 

“Did you see Ebobby before coming here?”

 

Lily opened her eyes again to see Dumbledore peering across at her with avid interest, clearly hanging on her response. Strange, had had both conveniently been Ebony’s enemy and desperately trying to be her friend.

 

“Yes,” Lily said shortly, before with a thought, adding, “She’s dead though.”

 

He paused, that single sentence seemed to shatter something in it, then, tears pouring down his face he cried, “Noooooooooo one, one, one!”

 

He was incapable though, even now, of despairing like a true human being. Lily went on, “It was a bullet at a concert, they thought she might recover, but she didn’t.”

 

And they had, they’d tried CPR, everyone on stage then Tom Satan Riddle himself. However, nothing had worked, where slitting wrists had done nothing, Lily’s will and bullet had finally been more than enough.

 

And at least there was something satisfying in that even if there wasn’t in anything else.

 

Death… Would it even stick? Lily didn’t think so, not for her, it never had before so why would it now. But all the same… What was left for her here?

 

Pointlessness does not equate meaninglessness, she’d said that to Rabbit, hadn’t she? Of course, he’d said Ebony Way’s death would change nothing, and he’d been right.

 

There was wretched sobbing, glancing over, she found herself unsurprised to see what was left of Albus Dumbledore trying to slit his wrists with a loose jagged stone. His hand shook desperately, his wrist scraped raw, and tears poured down his face as Lily watched in helpless, resigned, fascination.

 

“You know that won’t bring her back,” Lily noted but he just shook his head.

“Thar is noo world without Enoby!”

 

Lily snorted, a loud jarring sound in the eerie darkness of the prison, emptied out of all the previous criminals who likely had been cool goths themselves, leaving only her and Dumbledore, “There was no world with her either.”

 

“How dar you!” he accused, eyes blazing across the gap between their cells, “It is because of people like you that she is dead!”

 

“It was my bullet,” Lily acknowledged, watching as his eyes widened in horror and revulsion, “That said, apparently, murder isn’t the reason I’m here.”

 

No, it had been… What had it been? They hadn’t been entirely clear; her sentencing had come in the middle of deciding whether Billy Joe or Marilyn Manson should write the ballad immortalizing Ebony Way forever. However, it could have been her mishearing, but she’d thought at one point, among things like prep, goff, that they’d said it was gnostical turpitude. Something that…

 

Well, seemed to boil down to the crime of having the ability to think with any true meaning.

 

It had been very unclear though, ultimately, Lily supposed it didn’t matter.

 

The door opened, the grotesque remnants of Cornelius Fudge waltzed in to Dumbledore’s cell, “Dumbledorf, we ned you to teach at Hogwaaarts. But you will noot be principle!”

 

Dumbledore, bleeding, weak, and weary, was then dragged out of the cell by two goth goons and through the hallway, out of Lily’s sight. As he was taken he moaned, the name Ebony a ceaseless chant upon his chapped lips.

 

And then they were all gone, and it was just Lily, alone in the fortress of Azkaban.

 

What would Wizard Lenin say, if he was here?

 

Probably that she’d made a real mess of things this time, which, she had, she supposed, though she argued that it was hardly her fault. He might, after ranting, find it vaguely funny or at least ironic that they’d stuffed the girl-who-lived in Azkaban.

 

He’d be unnerved, dreadfully upset, but he’d… Well, she didn’t know, just that perhaps that strange softness that seemed to come over him now and then would be there too.

 

Death, too, would be there, as would the train station, Luna, even Rabbit, and everyone else who had been left behind or forgotten by the world itself.

 

The stone walls stared back at Lily, unfeeling and uncaring, and yet…

 

With a clarity she never experienced before—at first almost painful, so suddenly did it come, but then suffusing her with joy, she reflected: why am I here? Why am I lying like this? And having asked herself these simple questions, she answered them by approaching the door and looking around.

 

It looked the same as ever, as flat as ever, yet that flatness gave Lily a curious sense of optimism, of hope. A reminder that it was only as real as she allowed it to be, and that the truer world, the realer one, undoubtedly existed elsewhere.

 

And though the executioners were not present Lily could hear them screaming in dismay and horror and strange confusion.

 

The bars shuddered and became transparent, malleable beneath her fingertips, slowly Lily bent them and stepped through. Little was left of Azkaban. The spiral staircases and stone walls had long since collapsed in grayed gothic dust. Everything was coming apart. Everything was falling. A spinning wind was picking up and whirling; dust, rags, chips of painted woods, bits of gilded plaster, pasteboard bricks, posters; an arid gloom fleeted; and amidst the dust, and the falling things, and the flapping scenery, Lily made her way in that direction where, to judge by the voices, stood beings akin to her.

 

And with her final exit from the stage, all the lights at last went out.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I did. Personally, I think it's all great. Where else can we get cosmic horror?
> 
> Thanks for reading, comments, kudos, and bookmarks are greatly appreciated.


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